my kitty is floppy. i think this is because wisconsin suddenly noticed that it's the middle of june and decided to start having some summer weather. yah i was wearing a sweater a few days ago.

good times were had last weekend at pridefest. i volunteered on saturday with FORGE and ended up offering free gay hugs to people who were upset/annoyed with the anti-gay protesters. i actually got to see their entire activity for the day -- they rolled up about quarter after 3 with a bunch of signs and leaflets and such. oh by the way i fucking love anyone and everyone involved in PFLAG. when i went to pride for the first time last year i was standing in line and a PFLAG counter-protester greeted me and i totally teared up a bit, cos she was there because she had a gay son and she wanted everyone to feel welcome and loved, and it was a really wonderful thing to feel that, especially cos of how rough things were for me at the time. if my mom was still alive i know she'd be one of those people. although she might have had a hard time not getting into a fight with the anti-gay protesters.

anyway! protesters rolled up, PFLAG peeps made sure to stand near them. i and my co-volunteer offered free gay hugs and it was good times. around an hour after the protesters showed up hand-painted signs started appearing in their midst, saying things like "SKORTS - SKIRTS OR SHORTS - DECIDE!", "RHUBARB - VEGETABLE OR FRUIT?" "SOCKS THEN SHOES!!", "EAT CHEERIOS - GOOD FOR CHOLESTEROL" "FISH SANDWICH - GIVE ME YOUR FISH!" after only about a half an hour of the ever-multiplying signs and slogans (everyone with the nonsense signs was VERY vociferous in yelling out their very important messages about breakfast cereal and socks and such) the anti-gay protesters finally just gave up and sort of confusedly retreated. i offered gay hugs to the protesters as they departed but only one person took me up on my awesome offer! she said i was funny. then she tried to tell me how jesus really loved me, to which i replied, "thanks, i know he does, that's why i'm here."

the other highlight was my friend jesse telling the mayor about how i'd been beat up earlier in the week. heh.

speaking of, my face is much better! bruising seems to be gone, and the swelling. still hurts a little when i open my mouth wide but that's it. don't seem to be getting the pain-induced headaches anymore either. hurrah! i got the compensationform from crime victim services a couple days ago as well. now i just need to actually, er, fill it out. yes.

btw, who is no one watching In Treatment? IT IS AMAZIN

*back to writing stuffs*

so, for quite a while i've been thinking that doctor who fandom is in need of an awesome place for doctor who meta and discussion -- there have been some really good discussions on the anonmeme amongst all the wank, but they invariably disappear within a day or so into the depths of the comment pages. it is the way of the meme, which is as flighty and ephemeral as the internet, except... more so. and the meme shows that there is a hunger for a place in which to engage in this discussion. so i finally decided to do what i've been wanting to do for a while and create a meta comm.

i've got a co-mod (feel free to reveal yourself if you're ready to take on the mantle!), some ideas for basic guidelines and such, and a few ideas for essays. but i am missing the integral ingredient which is AN AWESOME NAME. so far all i can think of is meta_who, which is informative but a bit boring. if someone can think of something more awesome then i will give you internet cookies. or real cookies, if i ever meet you. (ask my roomies from last chiTARDIS. i brought home-made chocolate chip cookies, oh yes). otherwise i will make meta_who tonight! (won't be open for business quite yet, but it will exist).


in completely unrelated news, face is doing better still. also called up victim compensation today -- they said they don't usually recompense anyone for private property, but glasses might come under medical, so they'll send me a form which should come by sometime next week. then i'll fill it out, and wait three to four months for everything to be processed and find out if they'll help me out. semi-hurrah!

i'm volunteering at milwaukee pridefest tomorrow. come by if you enjoy gayness! and are in milwaukee, obvs.

sometimes i forget i live in wisconsin and am surprised when i type it out. hmmm. WISCONSIN.


ETA: the_metadel now exists! no content yet, but that will be coming forthwith, along with guidelines and maybe a fancy header image and stuffs.

so i came home from work the other night and colin and mudha47 were watching the end of a bollywood movie called salaam-e-ishq: a tribute to love and i saw this dude, akshaye khanna:



and immediately thought of this dude, nick briggs:



i've definitely been wanting to watch more bollywood with mudha47. is it wrong to want to watch some akshaye khanna cos he reminds me of nick briggs? if so then i fear i am a wrong person. D:

i also saw the preview to the upcoming torchwood season three recently, and was incredibly underwhelmed (um... isn't this plot just ripped off of every other episode of sarah jane adventures, except instead of watching the awesome kid actors i'd have to watch john barrowman?) until there was an unexpected clip of nick briggs near the end. dammit! the bastard is magic. he made me want to watch torchwood. TORCHWOOD.


meanwhile, thanks for all the well-wishes for my face. it's doing much better! just a wee bit bruised and most of the swelling's gone. yawning and chewing still hurt, but much less. i found a number for a crime victim's services department here in wisconsin, so i'll be calling them tomorrow about my glasses. haven't heard anything further from the cops, but then again, i didn't think i would, so no surprises there.

no one has said, "hey, sorry about YOUR FACE" to me, which is a shame since it was the most perfect situation possible. seriously, people, these opportunities don't arise every day.

today was a bit more actively full of insanity than normal. i've been campaigning for a small political nonprofit lately, and an hour or so into my shift today the sky became orange and black and tornado sirens started going off. obviously i was walking around by myself with no shelter to be had, so i found a walgreens and hunkered down until someone came to pick me up and drove me back to the office downtown. then about ten minutes after i'd finally got back we went back out and started campaigning again because thewarning was over and it had stopped raining. while talking to lots of disgruntled white people i got to hear someone say that the tax on cigarettes was unfair because the money went to fund children's healthcare programs, and if some kids are going to be sickly all the time then maybe they should have just been aborted. also talked to a dude who seemed quite nice except he kept talking about how his wife had just left him a couple of weeks before and she'd taken his dogs and what was he going to do with this house and look at all these caterpillars on his bush, they were eating all of the needles and he'd spent a lot of time on that bush, he'd spent TWENTY YEARS keeping that bush healthy.

i ended up signing out later than everyone else, because i was the only person to get a formal field report form printed out before the printer died. usually i try to get a ride home with peeps cos headquarters are in a slightly shady part of town and taking the bus home required transferring to another bus at an even shadier area. not that i've ever had a problem before, but i do realise i am a tiny gay trans white guy. i had to decide between waiting for the transfer for about a half an hour on martin luther king blvd (doesn't matter what city you're in, MLK is never in a good neighbourhood), at an unlit bus stop, or walk home through a somewhat shady area, but one that i've walked through before and that gets better with each block closer to my street.

apparently my choice to walk home was the wrong one this night, since i got jumped by three young guys and beat up and robbed. dude ran up and punched me in the face, i ended up on the ground, two other dudes ran up and joined in. i was like, "oh fuck", cos i didn't know if i was just in for a mugging because i was small and alone, or if it was an attack cos i looked gay/trans whatever and they had just decided to give me a serious beatdown. in the middle of getting punched repeatedly i was like, "hey, what do you want, i'll give it to you!" and first dude was like, "do you have any money? give us your money!" so i was like, "okay, sure, let me get it," and pulled my wallet out of my back pocket. one dude tried to grab it but i actually said, "hey man, let me keep my driver's license" and kept a hold of the thing, pulled out the little cash i had, and held it out to them. one of them took the money and they all ran off (after punching me one last time, i'm pretty sure). they'd broken my glasses and knocked the lenses out, so i got up and started looking for them in the grass by the sidewalk for about thirty or sixty seconds before i thought, "wtf me, those dudes are only like A BLOCK AWAY." so i consoled myself with one lens and then called 911 on my cellphone in case they noticed they'd only got away with maybe 18 bucks (at most! probably more like 12) and a ticket to pridefest, and decided to come back for more.

the nice operator was like, "is there a safe, well-lit place nearby, like a gas station? you should walk towards it." and i was like, "um... no, i'll just walk toward my house,", cos there WAS a gas station, but it was almost across the street from where i was attacked and i'm pretty sure *someone* must have seen that shit go down. managed to get to art bar (a bar near my house) and i stopped there to wait for cops. i thought that was maybe a good idea since i couldn't see anything, and it's a safe place. talked to cops, showed them area where attack took place, got driven home, talked to roommates, called sister, cops came back to take some photos of my swollen face, talked to my sister again.

i'm actually pretty upbeat, except for the loss of my glasses, which i can't afford to replace. thankfully i've still got my old pair, but they do suck, rather. oh well. other than that, i got some bruises and am out less than twenty bucks, which is pretty good considering i got jumped by three guys. which is what i told my sister when she was freaking out. then she said that as a revenge i should invent a "backpack helicopter" and then fly over those dudes and pull down my pants and take a shit on them. these are the kinds of things my sister comes up with, which is why i love her.

meanwhile, this story is all much funnier if i tell it in person. oh written text, you really *do* affect tone!