Lt. Dan Choi will shortly be on trial for being gay in the military. Sign the petition, please.

In other, less-infuriating news, I has a bed!



I am resisting the urge to just collapse into it for the whole weekend. <3 I was wrong last night: I do have self-control, just not over books.

The rest of the day will be spent cleaning and rearranging things such that I can fit all this stuff in my room in a convenient manner. Alas, I will not have a bedside table for a while. :

Eleven pee em is not the time to start reading massive feminist essays. Sigh.

....ah, fuck it:

http://daphnep.livejournal.com/418917.html

http://cereta.livejournal.com/518894.html#cutid1

http://cereta.livejournal.com/489127.html#cutid1

Remind me to read these later.

So there's no way I'm cutting this.



“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children...”

- an Iranian blogger, with more courage than most of us will ever know.

---

I don't want to link back to the blog in question, because, well, people have died that way. But I have the link, if anyone wants it.

Today I am wearing jeans.

You do not understand the triumph of this because you have never tried and failed to put jeans on with one hand, BUT KNOW THIS: I am wearing jeans because my left hand can now grip things for in excess of three seconds and exert a small amount of force if I tense all the muscles in my wrist and don't try to make my fingers do anything tricky. PANTS, I TELL YOU! I sympathise completely with the cast of Vagrant Story.

Also, Wyrren is coming today. :DDD We are watching stuff! And, er, probably going out for lunch, because let's face it, I have buggerall here, and even less that I can prepare myself. XD Despite pants, it is still really hard to cut Turkish bread.

[EDIT] Excellent post by zalia regarding the Iranian elections. Actually it was from one_hoopy_frood @ LJ, and this is what it said:

i realize now i do not fear death... i fear my daughter will not be free when i die

- From the Twitter of an Iranian medical student

"If it bothers you so much, then why don't you stop watching?" seems to be the question of the last few days from my friends and family who know how invested I have become in the cause of the Iranian people (as I have explained in great detail here) The answer is simple: one day of caring is not enough. We must be the voice for the people of Iran who would otherwise be silenced. They are without reliable news sources, they are without mobile phone calls, text messaging, facebook, twitter, youtube, AIM, Yahoo, Google, and pretty much every other useful outlet for information you can think of. Yet they persist on the streets and on the internet in any way they can. The least we can do, whether we are across continents, oceans, or time zones, is spread their words safely.

My death is irrelevant.Wht is important is that u do not forget my words.We want freedom.i will die 4that

- From the Twitter of a protester in Tehran

Right now, brave men and women in Iran, both young and old, are sacrificing their lives for their voices to be heard. They must fear not only the police, but also the Basij -a force of men loyal to the government who plant themselves among crowds in plain clothes in order to discretely attack protesters and incite chaos.The protesters are peaceful. They mass together in crowds that are reported to grow in size every day. At night they have very few, if any, safe places to stay. Houses with satelite dishes were attacked by the Basij tonight, and during the 50 minutes of Twitter's maintenance, another university was attacked.

140 characters is a novel when you're being shot at.

- From another Iranian Twitter

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP?

1. The most obvious thing to do is stay informed. Keep an eye on reliable sources on Twitter, refresh blogs and news sites that are covering the stories.


2. If you are on twitter, retweet information from reliable twitters, but REMOVE THE USERNAME if they are in Iran. People have died because of the lack of responsibility by fellow tweeters and the media in this front. They can be tracked down by the government of Iran.


3. Spread the information elsewhere. Repost this article or write your own on Facebook, Myspace, Tumblr, or anywhere else you can think of. If you write your own, make sure you are concise and accurate. Link to your sources for people to learn more.


4. Discretely change your location on Twitter to Tehran or Iran, and your time zone to GMT +3:30. Don't post to brag about how you did it, otherwise it was useless.


5. DO NOT auto-refresh and take down websites, even if you are asked. It slows down the internet for the rest of the people in Iran.


6. If you make a proxy DO NOT post it publically, otherwise it is useless. Send it in a direct message to a trusted source.


7. DO NOT spam the hash tag #IranElection with useless things to "confuse the government". This does not help at all.

USEFUL SITES TO FURTHER HELP

Cyber War Guide for Iran Elections

Green Revolution - How to Help

Anonymous - Why We Protest - Iran

STAY INFORMED!

Follow on Twitter: @ProtesterHelp and @StopAhmadi

(REMINDER: DO NOT REPOST PERSONAL TWITTERS OF THOSE INSIDE THE COUNTRY, EVEN IF THEY ARE RELIABLE!)

Chronology of events

Live-blogging by Andrew Sullivan

General information from a poser on Fark.com

Live-blogging on HuffingtonPost

دنیارابگوییدچطورآنهاانتخاباتمان دزدیده اند
Tell the world how they have stolen our election

- original article by one_hoopy_frood on LJ

[EDIT] The Parthenon had pigment! How exciting!

Read it. This, too.

It's fucking important.