On 15th July, this woman was dragged into a white car around 8.30am; she managed to shout out that she was being abducted before it drove away. Her body was found later that day in Ingushetia, with gunshot wounds, according to Russian news agency Itar-TASS.

This was Natalia Estimirova, who had worked since 2000 to document the human rights violations committed in Chechnya after the second Chechen war, and to help displaced people and other socially disadvantaged groups. She was awarded the Robert Schuman medal of the European Parliament in 2005, the Right Livelihood Award of the Swedish Parliament in 2004.

( She was also the first recipient of the Anna Politkovskaya award... )

I want to ask you, reading this, just to remember Natalia Estimirova and what she did, and her friends and colleagues who were killed before her; there's a link, here, to leave a message of condolence.

I'm writing this because I am free to speak the truth, and so, I dearly hope, are you who are reading this. If you want to know what the AI Urgent Actions which Imran Ezhiev said saved his life, that's here. In the Ingushetia region where Natalia Estimirova was kidnapped and murdered, a 29 year-old man named Ibragim Gazdiev was seized by armed men in camouflage in 2006. The investigation into his disappearance was finally reopened in 2009, partly due to the sheer volume of letters sent to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. And on 21st July, if you live in England, you can join a demonstration for Ebrima B. Manneh, a Gambian journalist who was 'disappeared' in July 2006.

That's a really small sample of all the missing, imprisoned or tortured human rights defenders around the world, and an even smaller one of all the people in the world who are being unjustly ill-treated by their government, whose deaths will never be properly investigated, whose words and lives people in power have done their best to wipe out. I'm writing this because my mother knows someone who stood up for human rights in Russia and keeps standing up, and because I researched this, just a tiny bit, and found I couldn't stop crying for some time. I think if you really think about this kind of thing that's what happens. Most of all I think there's something you can do.

Okay, from Ain't It Cool News via Metafilter we have the 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' Story Conference, which is the original 1978 story conference between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Laurence Kasdan where they plotted it out.

Now, I'm sure many people want to talk about the creative process, and screenwriting, and how action films work. Unfortunately, this journal is currently exclusively for talking about sex and food...or so it seems. So I'm just going to quote this bit, on the backstory they initially imagined for Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood:

G — I was thinking that this old guy could have been his mentor. He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven.

L — And he was forty-two.

G — He hasn't seen her in twelve years. Now she's twenty-two. It's a real strange relationship.

S — She had better be older than twenty-two.

G — He's thirty-five, and he knew her ten years ago when he was twenty-five and she was only twelve. It would be amusing to make her slightly young at the time.

S — And promiscuous. She came onto him.

G — Fifteen is right on the edge. I know it's an outrageous idea, but it is interesting. Once she's sixteen or seventeen it's not interesting anymore. But if she was fifteen and he was twenty-five and they actually had an affair the last time they met. And she was madly in love with him



...........my soul hurts. I'm not sure I have any comment, except that, uh, that was the first thing I shipped! I have fanfiction from when I was 9 lying around somewhere! I saw Crystal Skull three times in the cinema mostly due to my love of their relationship, despite JONESYYYY and certain tacky plot elements and JONESYYYY and the plot not really tying together and JONESYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

In any case! They have this dialogue in Raiders of the Lost Ark about how Marion was 'only a child' (her words) when they had the affair and I assumed that meant - emotionally, not actually. Uh, wow. I just....and that they considered eleven and twelve as okay? And used 'promiscuous' and 'affair' to describe a kid and a twenty five year old man? And...and....aaaugh.

I'M STILL REALLY, REALLY GAY

this post brought to you by realising that I am shyer about saying this on the internet than I was when I was 14 and ~questioning~, jesus. And also that in some ways I...still hate myself over it? What the hell, self? IT'S OKAY IT'S COOL I'M GOOD WITH IT talk to me about magical matters of sexuality because I am ALL OPEN except apparently in rural Norway but I think that's pretty sensible see also: to my parents.

Today: overate, overslept. IMPROVEMENT ON YESTERDAY.

I really, really love books. I've been reading them all the time ever since I began to be able to do so, and my reading habit has only really dropped off since my final exams at school, when I just had to stop for a few months to revise and found it quite hard to pick back up again. Also, our library remodelled itself to be more accessible and now has about 50% less books and the Classics section is on a single carousel which doesn't help, and I am away from school and thus the beautiful 250-volume Everyman Millenium library which I had only got a quarter of the way through.

I also love talking about books, and sharing them, and listening to other people talk about them! And most of my friends don't read that much, or don't like some of the books I love. The backs of books are frequently misleading when you pick them up, newspaper reviews can be all over the place and are also only helpful if you're ordering books are the library (which now costs me money) or buying them new, and I am a student and thus very very broke.

So this post is for you to recommend books to me -- whatever you've read and enjoyed and why, whoever you are! even if you are some random passing stranger I would love to hear it -- and for me to recommend books to you if you want me to. I may reply at GREAT LENGTH. It is totally cool if you don't like them usually. I will provide you with gateway book.

Also please feel free to talk about books you really hated or had some major problem with which marred the whole thing or which you weren't sure what to think about. BOOKS! BOOKS! BOOKS!

Things that probably shouldn't brighten my mood tonight, but do:

1) finding out that I reviewed a work of fanfiction, aged 16, with the opening gambit "Nnngh!". See, my life isn't a relentless downhill spiral! I don't think I'm ever going to top that for nonsensicality.

Yeah, I can use imbd.com! This is good, as my memory is a bit faulty.

1. Pick twenty of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. No Googling, using IMDB search or other search functions.

Stolen rather blatantly from t3h_toby_chan.

1."I remember we had one of these in my father's house. The aperture through which the sand runs is so tiny that... that first it seems as if the level in the upper glass never changes. To our eyes it appears that the sand runs out only... only at the end... and until it does, it's not worth thinking about... 'til the last moment... when there's no more time left to think about it."
2. "The trees still grow. Let's have another bottle."
3. "The Pentecost... I don't... I don't know what the pentacost is. I guess it means the world ends and guys like you and me march off to hell."
4. "Abdul? Mohammed? ...Bob?"
5. "You know Mr Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man."
6. "You just saunter out of your house one fine morning and pluck God out of the air as easily as catching a butterfly. It's all too simple."
7. "Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite."
8. "If only they would understand what we are trying to do for them."
9. "Only God knows everything. He works for Mossad."
10. "She offered me free love. At the time, that was all I could afford."
11. "The thing I hate about you, Rowntree, is the way you give Coca-Cola to your scum, and your best teddy bear to Oxfam, and expect us to lick your frigid fingers for the rest of your frigid life. "
12. "I am the author. You are the audience. I outrank you!"
13. "But the other two pilots... they're just fine. They're at the controls flying the plane... free to peruse a life of religious fulfillment."
14. "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."
15. "Faith is a torment. It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call."
16. "As if a woman has ever loved a man for his virtue."
17. "Well the first man comes along that can read Latin is welcome to rob us, far as I'm concerned. I'd like a chance t' shoot at a educated man once in my life."
18. "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more then ten to twenty million killed, tops. Depending on the breaks."
19. "Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs, and all our old pretenses ripped away. God's icy wind will blow."
20. "Good luck, and may Fortune smile on...most of you."

Also, I couldn't remember any quotes from Leningrad Cowboys Go America, possibly because it's about a bunch of very taciturn Finnish people, but any film keyworded on imdb with:

"Road Movie | Band | Beer | Coffin | Frozen Body"

is obviously worth watching.

I am certainly pro #4 and #5.

REMIND ME NEVER TO BE PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL ON THIS THING AGAIN UNLESS I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY. Anyway:

I am, seriously, sorry about dropping out of contact with the everyone who had me friended here. If you still want to talk me, please do; if you don't, I understand. Thank you for everything.

That was what I meant to say in the first place. Sorry.

...got hacked again what.

It's okay if you don't, um, believe that wasn't me as no one did last time on the toriamos community, ahaha, but I didn't notice this for ages and am kind of annoyed.

Vent anonymously, please, person who felt urge to be a bitch? Also I should probably change my password more often.

Anyway, I love all of you really, I'm just insecure and overworked so you don't get talked to. IN A WAY it's kind of nice to have an opportunity to get in touch again even if it's one caused by random trolling.

Oh LJ, I hardly use you and STILL, THE DRAMA.

Yeah, I get really sick of everyone sometimes. I was venting. This is not the real baeckahaesten. I hacked their account just to spread mean comments. So don't be nasty to them, you don't know who I am but sometimes, you just gotta be a bitch.

A bit more high school trip to Vienna!Bleach. I do have this plotted out, I swear! ...sort of.

( 755 words of not doing homework, VICTOLY )

EDIT EDIT EDIT: is a fragmentary mess. Am in France, will clean up later.

Sorry for being so absent!

( School Trip! A Mystery Bleach Crossover, set in the Fine City of Vienna, and not featuring Harry Lime in any Way, Shape, or Form )

Today's snippets of conversation:

-Why is there a banana in my bed?
-I put it down there, okay?
-Why?
-I had to do some kind of non banana-gripping activity.
-Didn't you notice it was lost?
-No. Well, I thought of asking where it was, but it seemed petty. As it was just fruit.
-I could have ended up covered in mashed banana. Beast.
-Next time I'll fit all the food in this house with a homing device.

-So there was this mother in Connecticut, and she gave birth to a baby that weighed...
-Weighed...?
-Guess it!
-I don't want to. It's too painful.
-14 pounds.
-Fourteen? Ouch!
-Yup, 14.
(from the other room) -If that was a carp, I'd stuff it.

-So there I was in the church, where they were worshipping the barren blood of Christ and stuff, and my menstrual blood just slopped all over the floor and, like, tentacle-raped the groom.

Hey everyone,

Just a note to say that the reason I disappeared for a couple of days was because my modem got STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. Actually it's kind of retrospectively awesome, in an oh snap I have to replace the answering machine and the router and the modem and the TV aerial too way. The sky went white, thunder rolled, and half the things in the house went baking hot and melted. And then it got fixed! After many hours on hold to NTL listening to very boring music and being told to look up help about your internet connection online which might be hard because I was ringing the MY BROADBAND DOESN'T WORK HELPLINE. Heh. I'm glad I'm naturally quite calm and happy and doormatlike at times like these, especially as my father ended up swearing madly at a real person down the line ("STOP LYING TO ME, YOU BASTARD!!! - oh, wait, is that a human being? ...sorry"). I've also discovered how surprisingly internet-dependent I am. It's like losing the limb you never knew you had.

Also, everyone should watch the new Bleach opening because it's beautiful and wonderful and has so much Matsumoto I made undignified whale noises for several minutes afterwards, and over /filler/ too. Watch for Ishida doing the dishes, and ashausdhasaoidfhosj Gin hugchoking her, which was about seventeen kinds of emotionally messed up gorgeousness. How I do love relationships with violence, betrayal and/or backstabbing.

Oh, and try out Maria-sama ga Miteru sometime. It's just terribly cute, slightly deranged, and starts off as super-shoujo and fluffy and sincere and gets more so but at the same time stupidly hilarious on purpose. Seriously, by about the fourth episode I was laughing my head off and "awwing" at it repeatedly. Very strange in a subtle way, nice music, and the characters are great when you get used to 'em.

I...I wrote a Utena/Bleach crossover. INSTEAD OF FULFILLING MY OBLIGATIONS though I guess it counts towards crimsonleaves.

Ahahaha this is completely insane.

( Super-pink-chan!!! )

I'm so writer's-blocked now it's not even funny. No ideas at all.

So, make me write! As many requests, whatever you like, I don't expect you to review or even read, I just want to be cattle-prodded into writing. The original novel you always wanted! Complete insanity! Fanfic! ANYTHING FROM DRABBLES TO FULL-LENGTH I WILL TRY, THE NOT WRITING HURTS. Even poetry, damnit.

Fandoms baecka knows, if you want that -

Fruits Basket
Maria-sama ga Miteru
Naruto (kinda)
Bleach
Fullmetal Alchemist
...uh, I probably know more but I can't remember you can try me?

*insert emo here* :D