The 35th Precinct

Before I natter about anything else, I must thank faylinn_drake for helping me map out a rough arc for my SVU/Tommy Dowd bunny. It was a welcome distraction from my money nightmares. As a bonus, she said she would actually get around to watching Eddie Cahill's SVU appearance. Eee! It will be interesting to see what she thinks of a Not!Flack role.

My stipend is still not here, but my trustee said a check should be here by Wednesday or Thursday. God, I hope so. The cable bill is past due, and I need money for bus fare when classes start a week from Tuesday. Food is covered, but if Comcast Man shows up, I'm screwed.

Roomie and I are re-reading HBP in preparation for Deathly Hallows, and we just finished "The Secret Riddle". The chapter bothers me. It's a fine and engaging chapter, to be sure, but the depiction of young Voldemort as a manipulative socio/psychopath belies the idea of choices defining who we are, as Dumbledore tells Harry in CoS. In fact, JKR goes out of her way to establish the Gaunts as mad, inbred loons. Dumbledore points out in "The House of Gaunt" that the line possessed a tendency to violence, and he implies a genetic predisposition. The idea is reinforced throughout the chapters that should be subtitled, "A History of Voldemort," and the inconsistency between thematic premise and narrative function just...bugs me.

I think I need to poke the idea a bit more; there might be some HP meta in it. Granted, it's a subject that's been dissected and bandied about ad infinitum in the fandom, but some lit crit would serve as a good warm-up for the analytical papers I'll be constructing in Religious Ethics this summer.

No ficcing last night, but maybe today...

The promised money has yet to appear in my account. I am not pleased. Auntie has been apprised of the situation, and if the money is not in my account by Monday, I'm going to start screaming. Loudly. I don't mind living on a budget, and I understand that people make mistakes, but in the era of instantaneous wire transfers, I don't understand the hangup. Goddammit.

All of this has added to my sense of schadenfreude over Paris Hilton going back to jail after the nimrods at the L.A. County Sheriff's Department allowed her to leave on medical grounds because the Hiltons' pet shrink declared jail too stressful for poor Paris. What bullshit. Do you know what would happen to me if I broke the law? Why, the TPD would mount a freestanding handrail over the steel john and tell me to suck it up and enjoy my stay. The Hilton debacle is yet more proof that justice is not blind. It sees green with perfect clarity.

odogoddess sent me a link to this news story which clearly illustrates why I'm uneasy about crossing the street. Most drivers have an alarming sense of entitlement and blatantly ignore crosswalk signals. More than once, people have continued to turn into the crosswalk after I have been given the signal, and I'm often trapped in the middle of said walk because the cars have blocked access to the curb cut by pulling into the crosswalk instead of staying behind the appropriate line. People in cars behave as though pedestrians are nuisances to be ignored and not people with the right of way. Too many disabled folks are being killed and critically injured by impatient and inattentive drivers. Wherever you're going, it's not worth a human life, and please have the common sense to put down your cellphone, coffee, and mascara wand and keep your eyes on the road.

Lastly, I signed up for the brasslove Summer '07 Vacation Challenge. It's a Jim Brass ficathon, and my prompt is Aruba. It's the last challenge for which I intend to declare myself this summer...and this time, I mean it.