chesneycat

Last night, we threw a bit of a half-term party.  It was meant to be a BBQ, but the weather was pretty cold and cloudy, so it became an indoors pizza-party instead.  Nice seeing a lot of the teachers and a few of my work friends together.  Everyone was impressed with the size of the garden, as most of the people there haven't actually seen our house in daylight before. Chesney was also a hit, as despite the loud music/voices and a few shouts of "NO!" whenever he got too close to the strawberries and cream, he spent the entire evening moving from lap to lap.  I'm going to spend the next week getting hairs out of my trousers though, and I'm sure everyone else is going to be doing the same.

Weirdly, we found out that two of our friends have just been through the same thing we have pretty much (i.e. post-heartbeat disaster), but about a week earlier, so I probably wasn't the best hostess to everyone else there.  These things happen so often, but it's kept so hidden, except when it's not.  I think they, too, have grown from the experience, and that's what it is.  Just life, and experience.  Nothing to be afraid of.  Anyway, some interesting discussions were had - we agree that a science background can make basic acceptance easier, not that it helps at all with the rest of the mountain.  But the main question was about life, consciousness, souls and all that.  An eight or nine week embryo really doesn't have much scope for consciousness, but the spark of life's there already, and they're amazingly tenacious.  As far as souls go, my totally non-scientific opinion is that they grow out of love.  These were lives worth grieving for, if only because we loved them.

Anyway... the party wound down at about 1am, which was about right seeing as a lot of us are working today, and the teachers are still zonked out from teaching.  I got Jez to drive me in - he didn't drink an entire bottle of wine, unlike myself, and I'd prefer to give myself a couple more hours before getting behind the wheel again.  No obvious hangover yet (aside from a touch of dehydration - why did I forget my pre-bed pint of water? Why?), which surprises me, but I guess I took things fairly slowly over the evening.

Must do it again some time.  Preferably when it's sunnier.

Ah... and the whole fandom debacle.  Well.  I've been following it for a few days on fanficrants and also over at fandom_wank, and my reactions have been a mixture of laughs and raised eyebrows (both of which were heavily tinged with a large dose of WTF? at Six Apart's complete lack of clue), and annoyance on behalf of the groups who really shouldn't have been caught up in the Great Strikethrough.  I mean, they even bahleted serious literature communities, which is getting pretty close to the level of book-burning.  But even so, some of the stuff that's gone and reappeared does make me a little uncomfortable (and by some, I mean a very tiny minority).  Yes, it's fictional, and yes, it's not actively promoting any nastiness, and yes, the disclaimers are all in place.  But I think I see some of it in the same category as foxhunting... the enjoyment that the participants get out of some of the... edgier? journals/communities seems a little too much, and a little misplaced.  To be blunt, some of it is just too... squick, and I'm uncomfortable just knowing it's out there.  But who am I to judge?  There's fanfic porn, and then there's fanfic porn.  Mileage will vary, as they say.   But honestly, wielding the big delete purely on the basis of listed interests?  The sheer stupid of it all beggars belief.