I’d been on the fence about whether to participate in the LiveJournal content strike, but after reading this post about it by sunspiral, I will be participating. Since I don’t post every day anyway, you wouldn’t know unless I told you, so I’m telling you. ( Some explanation, but not enough :-) )

sparkymonster and several other wonderful people on my Flist have called my attention to International Blog Against Racism Week. From starkeymonster’s post:

It's International Blog Against Racism Week! YAY!

How to participate? oyceter says...
1. Announce the week in your blog.

2. Switch your default icon to either an official IBAR week icon, or one which you feel is appropriate. To get an official IBAR week icon, you may modify one of yours yourself or ask someone to do so. Here's a round up of IBARW icons.

3. Post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of a race that isn't yours, portrayals of race in fiction, review a book on the subject, etc. (Linking back here (ibarw) is highly appreciated!)

For inspiration, here are last year's IBARW posts. You can also check out this post for further resources.
...

PSST: It will help a lot on del.icio.us if you title your entry something topical, as opposed to just "Intl. Blog Against Racism Week."

I’m unlikely to manage to actually manage to post anything appropriate, since I’ve been busy enough lately that I haven’t even found time to post about the important stuff that’s happened to me personally¹, but I think it’s a great idea and I wanted to point people at it.

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¹ F’rinstance, I twisted my (other) ankle on Saturday and fell down in the middle of the street. Got an awesome bruise on my thigh from the curb. I’m fine, though; the nice drivers stopped and didn’t hit me, and I’m back to walking almost normally now.

So, it has occurred to me that now that I’m growing my hair out (albeit frustratingly slowly), none of my userpics looks like me any more. So, here’s a new userpic, and at least one of my userpics looks like me now.

Also:

Hi! I’ve just created the quincy_ma community, “for those who live, work, or play in Quincy, Massachusetts”. The userinfo page has more about what it’s for. I’m probably going to shop it around in South-Shore related communities soon, but thought I’d give y’all a heads-up now.

(There was already quincy_losers, but it seems like its populace was pretty exclusively high-school age and it seems like it’s been quiet for a while, so I don’t think the new community is superfluous.)

Hi. I’m about to prune my lj Friends list. If I take you off, it’s not because I don’t love you any more or don’t want you to read my protected entries, it’s just that I’ve had to mess with my friends groups lately (creating new groups and changing old ones), and the more people I have on my Friends list, the more tedious that is. (Actually, if anybody knows of Unix or OSX software that makes managing custom friends groups easier, I’d be interested in hearing about it. What I’d like is a grid with all my Friends down one side, and all my custom friends groups along the top, filled with checkboxes, so I could compare at a glance who was in what group and compare the memberships of different groups. Extra points if it let me change the ordering of the custom friends groups, so I could put two columns I wanted to be similar-but-not-identical next to each other.)

Anyway, the reason I’m posting this is (1) to let you know that it’s not personal if I take you off the list; it’s just about convenience, and (2) so that if I take you off, but you actually would like to be able to read my protected posts, you can let me know so I can add you back on. (I’m guessing most of the people I’m going to take off don’t read me anyway, but I thought I’d mention it just in case.)

[Edit: I’ve just done that pruning, so if you can still read this locked entry you are in no imminent danger of not being able to read my seekrit stuff.]

So my sister, bcat1 has just posted her first ever LiveJournal post, in which we learn that she is slothful, unlike anybody else on LJ. If you feel like it, pop over there and say hi.

(I need a baby-picture userpic.)

Wow! Everybody welcome my fabulous sister, bcat1 and her wonderful husband spacechicken to the Borg hive-mind LiveJournal! Yay! Now I’m really glad I filtered that post last night. :-)

(Coincidentally, I was just looking at the list of people who had friended me this morning, and wondering who bcat1 and spacechicken were.)

You two might be interested in yendi’s journal; he sometimes reviews horror movies and is generally interesting. ayalanya makes jewelry. chillguru makes music. Also, docorion is my wonderful housemate, and you’ll probably recognize cathijosephine. (And sionnagh is in Honolulu, but she doesn’t post much these days.)

bcat1, now you can help me in my nefarious scheme to get Mother and Don sucked into the LiveJournal vortex. :-)

(1) That was a short race! I’ve changed my journal back.

(2) I just came home from Star Wars III: Return of the Sith. It was much better than the other two movies of the prequel trilogy. Of course, that’s like saying it was more honest than Richard Nixon. I find it amusing that the best acting in the movie was done by a CGI animation based on a puppet. Still, as a special-effects extravaganza, it was pretty fun, and the special effects were such that I’m glad I didn’t wait for video.

I definitely should not be allowed in a used-book store without adult supervision. It’s dangerous. Highlights today are a leather-bound, gilt-edged autobiography of Havelock Ellis and a Sanskrit primer. But as a reward for my pathetic lack of resolve in the face of thousands of books, I got to spend some unexpected time with cathijosephine at the Diesel, where she came to borrow a cup of Internet.

shadesong and yendi’s visit was lovely! yendi, whom I hadn’t met in person before, is good people.

I’ve switched my journal style to one of the new ones, “A Novel Conundrum”. I really like the visually simple look, but there are some things I really don’t like about the new style. One is that it took me some tweaking to get most of the entries to be the same width, and even so, unusually short entries are narrower for some reason. (I want them to be the same width, so that the left margins line up and the userpics on my Friends page line up.) Two is that it doesn’t include my links list. Three is the fact that I can’t easily make subjects boldfaced or larger, rather than small-caps or letterspaced. Four is, um, I don’t remember what four is, but I’m sure there must be one. Anyway, the race is on to see whether I learn how to edit LiveJournal styles before I get frustrated and switch back to the old one. If the new style looks strange or broken to you, please let me know.

Also, at least docorion is interested in this post by ert about a site that combines Google Maps and the MBTA’s trip planner so you can see the next few busses (or trains) at any stop near you. You have to drag and zoom to find the part of Boston you care about, but it’s still pretty nifty. (Also, practice in that peculiar and ancient art of finding a place by looking around on a map, as opposed to typing an address in a search field, is not necessarily such a bad thing.)

This is quick, because I’m very sleepy, but I’ve been meaning for a while to point people at my friend ragingamazon’s journal. She’s a photojournalist, and she’s spending three months in Israel (with side trips). That means especially interesting stories and pictures. (This userpic is cropped with permission from a picture she took, by the way.)