Otterday! And Open Thread.

by Lauredhel on November 14, 2009

My favourite site this week features baby Asian Small-Clawed otters born in Osaka, Japan. More photos of the otters can be found at Zooborns.

babyottersosaka

Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a great book? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?

Reminder: Hoyden About Town has moved to www.hoydenabouttown.com. Please update your blogrolls and bookmarks! Please also re-subscribe, to make sure you are using the new Feedburner feed.

Share this post: Tweet It | Facebook It | Stumble It | Digg It | Delicious It

This article was written by lauredhel

Lauredhel is a forty-something woman with a disability. She lives in her Western Australian family home where books, Lego, and soapmaking gear constantly compete for space. She blogs about feminism, reproductive justice, freedom from violence, the use and misuse of language, medical science, being disabled, her vegetable garden, and whatever else pops into her head. Lauredhel also blogs at FWD/Forward (feminists with disabilities), scribbles at her personal dreamwidth journal Selective and Arbitrary, and co-moderates Hollaback Australia. She joined Hoyden About Town in 2007.

lauredhel has written 1319 posts for Hoyden About Town. If you liked this post, you might like to subscribe to the feed via RSS or EMAIL to get instantly updated for more posts like this.

{ 27 comments }

1 meloukhia November 14, 2009 at 9:31 am: I squealed all over again seeing these otters here (saw them on Zooborns yesterday). They really are so. damn. cute.

I’m reading this book right now called “The East, The West, & Sex” and while it is not entirely unproblematic, it has some interesting content (as well as some debunking of some pretty tired myths). At any rate, I just finished the bit on Madama Butterfly, and it gave my brainmeats much food for thought.
meloukhia´s last blog ..How We Watch
2 KM November 14, 2009 at 12:32 pm: After living in Melbourne for over a year and a half, I’ve finally ‘gone native’ and bought a bicycle. It’s a retro fold-up teal blue one, and I can’t wait to get it fitted with either a big wicker front-basket or a couple of panniers and explore some more of my area. I don’t run a car, so I’m really excited to have a new transport option.

I’m trying to be less of an eco-jerk at the moment (less plastic, shorter showers, eco cleaning products, recycling, refilling containers etc) so I’m turning into a right hippy.

Meloukhia, will keep an eye out for that book. Sounds challenging, in the good way.
3 Jha November 14, 2009 at 12:58 pm: I finished NaNoWriMo on Monday.

Now getting back my energy so I can blog again, but I also have to work on other novelling projects, AND keep holding these events for the locals. Sigh.

Also, my copy of Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter is in.
4 meloukhia November 14, 2009 at 2:25 pm: Oh my, Jha, that sounds like a book I may need to acquire.
5 Jennifer November 14, 2009 at 3:46 pm: I’m in Sydney for the weekend (and Tori Amos Monday night o/) – was thinking of brunch/lunch/something in town tomorrow, any and all Sydney Hoydenizens are welcome to join me. Was thinking the Lindt Cafe at Darling Harbour – I’ll probably be there from around 11am tomorrow for anyone who wants to pop by for coffee/chocolate/chatting/whatever.

I’m @jennifergearing on Twitter which will be the easiest way to catch me whilst I’m out tomorrow.
6 tigtog November 14, 2009 at 6:41 pm: @Jennifer,

I’m assisting/photographing my husband officiate at his first marriage ceremony as a civil celebrant tomorrow, so I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, I’m afraid. I might just be able to swing by for a quick coffee, but I’m not promising anything.
7 Nacey November 14, 2009 at 10:03 pm: My sleeping is totally back-to-front, it’s so frustrating. I sleep during the day and am up all night. It’s very annoying. It’s my period’s fault. It kept me awake for nearly two days straight, the pain was so bad.

I’ve been really enjoying this series of Merlin. The show delights me, as it’s so innocent and sweet.

I hope everyone’s having a great weekend.
8 amandaw November 15, 2009 at 3:36 am: OMG Otter kittens! Ohhhhhhh. Wub.
9 Anna November 15, 2009 at 5:48 am: Jha! Congrats on finishing up your novel! You rock! :)
10 Ange November 15, 2009 at 8:49 pm: My two and a half year old squealed with delight at the sight of those otters. Ah it was lovely, I thought he’d moved on from those joyful outbursts.
11 Jha November 16, 2009 at 12:22 am: meloukhia – FUN book. I’m iffy on the disability issues within it, but I think they were treated decently enough (better than PPZ for sure!). There’s a funny little bromance thing going on in there too, which is sure to be slashfic fodder in the future.

Anna – Oh, no, I haven’t finished the book! Still maybe a couple more thousand before it’s finished! ^^; I simply got the 50k on Monday. Thanks though!!
12 tigtog November 16, 2009 at 3:13 pm: Have just waved away two men and their truck full of 5 cubic metres of junk from my garage.

That’s about half of it.

It’s a start.
13 Mindy November 16, 2009 at 4:34 pm: @ Tigtog. Well done. Hubby cleaned out part of the garage the other day and I resisted looking to see what he had thrown out. I figure if it has spent three years in the garage chances are I don’t need it.
14 Deborah November 17, 2009 at 9:44 am: I’ve been watching the news about the little girls in Melbourne who are undergoing surgery to be separated (conjoined at the head), hoping that it all goes well for them. I’ve been very impressed by the photos the Royal Children’s Hospital has released – there are none of the girls together. Monozygotic twins often struggle to be seen as individuals,* so the individual photos are very nice indeed. And the individual photos mean we’re not seeing them as a freak show. It’s very sensitively done.

* Early on, we developed the habit of never referring to our daughters as “the twins” for this reason.
15 DeusExMacintosh November 17, 2009 at 11:05 am: Why is no-one raving about Waters of Mars last night?!! {boggles} it was BEYOND AWESOME!!!!
16 tigtog November 17, 2009 at 11:06 am: @Deborah,

My best friends at school were almost universally known to everyone as “the [their-surname] twins”. They struggled then and are still struggling now to be seen as individuals, despite spending several years residing on opposite sides of the world before they ended up living together again as adults.

I still remember how astonished I was when I realised that other people were not pretending to be unable to tell them apart – I had thought it was a form of teasing, but I suddenly realised that it was genuine (although I’m pretty sure that it meant that they couldn’t be bothered to get to know them well enough to learn – all of us who were their close friends could easily tell them apart). In fact, I could always tell them apart on the phone (to their occasional annoyance when they were up to something) and knew which one was which from a block away by the way that they walked.

I’ve got all my digits crossed for the safe unconjoining of the girls in Melbourne.
17 tigtog November 17, 2009 at 11:59 am: @DEM,

Because we haven’t seen it yet! I haven’t even seen any news of when the ABC is going to play it for us – the last one to be “fast-tracked” took a month, if I recall.

ADDIT: a bit of googling tells me that we’ll get it on free-to-air in the first week of December. Only three weeks to wait, it could be worse, but it’s still annoying.
18 DeusExMacintosh November 18, 2009 at 7:24 am: Just a whinge today. There was a meeting of NATO at the Edinburgh Conference Centre this morning which is unfortunately on my route to the public pool where I do lanes. A woman threw herself out of her wheelchair in protest out front just before the “important people” arrived. I’m not sure whether she was protesting the war in Afghanistan or the fact that the police had cordoned off the only stretch of accessible pathement for several hundred metres in the name of “security”, forcing those of us on scooters or in wheelchairs to progress along in the busy car lane risking our lives and assistance dogs.

Bastards.
19 Rebekka November 18, 2009 at 9:34 am: For some reason, there’s a weird thing happening intermittently where I can see people’s gravitars, but not the name/date/time up the top of their comments. Frinstance, on comments 1-8 I can see names and times, but comments nine onwards they’re missing… (Internet explorer 7, if that helps, and only because we have an SOE at work)
20 tigtog November 18, 2009 at 9:37 am: Thanks Bekk – I’ll look into it.
21 su November 18, 2009 at 10:08 am: Did anyone else watch Lilies? Looks promising.

Faux Lip reading + german metal influences = Best music video ever. (via Peterserafinowicz.com)
22 Kirstente November 18, 2009 at 10:15 am: DEM – Waters of Mars! OMG! SO good! Also OMG yay at the trailer for the next one!

But I shall say no more for fear of spoiling.
Kirstente´s last blog ..Sunday Evening Video
23 su November 18, 2009 at 10:30 am: Did anyone see Lilies? Looks promising.

Faux lip-reading + geman metal parody = Best music video ever (via peterserafinowicz.com)
24 su November 18, 2009 at 5:39 pm: How did I do that? Pish – sorry for the double post.
25 orlando November 18, 2009 at 6:21 pm: We gave Lilies a try, and thought it looked like what the BBC still does best, so will definitely be back for the second installment.

Have become intrigued by Hungry Beast. Not every segment is successful (that would be a bit much to ask from this concept, I think), but there have been some, like the piece on body image, that were better than anything I’ve seen from “straight” journalists. And if you can skate over the ableist language, the bit on straight girls pashing was a hoot.
26 tigtog November 19, 2009 at 6:06 am: @orlando,

I’m enjoying Hungry Beast quite a lot. As you say, not every segment works perfectly, but I love the way that it jumps around between different moods and approaches to the various subjects. I’ve been a particular fan of Dan Ilic’s since I saw his “Beaconsfield – The Musical” last year, too – another show all about deconstructing the media.
27 Mindy November 19, 2009 at 4:42 pm: So as not to derail the rape thread, I will put this here.

I saw today a great ad on the back of a toilet door about drink spiking.

It said don’t spike drinks. It’s stupid, It could kill someone, It is illegal. If you are thinking of spiking someone’s drink, think again. Yay I thought, finally something targetted at the people doing the spiking. I forgot to ask any of the guys if there were similar signs in the Gents. I hope there were.