It's All About Friends

"

Although Jewel Staite had to withdraw from a personal appearance for a business commitment, she has taped an exclusive message for us to play before the movie!

10. We have a super-secret introduction to the movie!

9. Costume contest with great prizes!

8. Trivia contest with great prizes!

7. Door prizes that you don't have to do anything for except show up!

6. Sing-along filking with Cindy Turner, aka Shaddyr!

5. The world premiere of a new song by local Browncoat, Brandon Klassen!

4. Silent auction with items signed by the cast of Smallville, James Marsters (Spike) and Jewel, among other things! (Cashy money only, please.)

3. Joss's Equality Now speech!

2. You will be supporting Equality Now and the BC Women's Hospital & Health Centre!

And the Number 1 reason to come to the charity screening:

1. To see Serenity on a big screen with a roomful of Browncoats!

Now doesn't that sound like a great way to spend the day?

Tickets are still available via PayPal on our blog at http://serenityscreeningvan.blogspot.com until 5 pm Saturday, or at Happy Bats Cinema store, 198 East 15th Avenue at Main Street until Friday night. Tickets will also be available at the door - $15 cash only.

What writer are you like? J. K. Rowling You are like J. K. Rowling. "Joanne "Jo" Murray, née Rowling OBE[1] (born 31 July 1965),[2] who writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling,[3] is a British writer and author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. " - wikipedia Click Here to Take This Quiz

Quizzes and Personality Tests

The good news last night was that negotiations in the Writers' strike will resume after the American Thanksgiving holiday this week (November 26th). That doesn't mean the fight is over by any means so now is the time for even more showing of support.

To that end, some of the showrunners and writers, including Joss Whedon, Jane Espenson, Ron Moore, and others, have come up with a plan, based on ideas thrown around on Whedonesque and the Fans4Writers (http://www.fans4writers.com/) forum. Read Joss's comments here: http://whedonesque.com/index2.php?comments=14772#198083. Then go to the link at the top of the post to participate. At a $1 a box (plus PayPal costs) - and environmentally friendly pencils - this is a wonderful way to show our support from whatever part of the world we are in.

Joss has a new show called "Dollhouse" and Tim Minear is going to be working with him - and it stars Eliza Dushku. Please let the writers' strike end quickly! (I know they haven't officially gone out yet, but everything I read points to them going later today - and it only makes sense that they would.)

Read all about it at the various links on Whedonesque: http://whedonesque.com/index2.php?comments=14600#194420

My mother - and various English teachers - would have disowned me if I hadn't! Thanks to electrcspacegrl for this one - samanthadelayed for the last one.

You Scored an A

You got 10/10 questions correct. It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

You scored as 8 1/2" Willow with Hippogrif Talon, Hippogrifs demand respect, and so do you. Even so, you're flexible and can move to make other people happy. </td> 8 1/2" Willow with Hippogrif Talon 71% 9" Rowan with Leprechaun Hair 64% 14" Oak with Hippogrif Talon 57% 9 1/2" Rosewood with Phoenix Feather 54% 8" Cedar with Unicorn Hair 54% 9" Ash with Dragon Hearstring 46% 7 1/2" Birch with Veela Hair 39% 10" Mahogony with dragon heartstring 36% 7" Holly with Leprechaun Hair 29% 10" Willow with Veela Hair 29% 11" elm with phoenix feather 11% Which wand should you recieve? (Harry Potter) created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Dolphin, The dolphin protects and guides you. Like the dolphin you are probably very intelligent and spirited. However your thirst for popularity could be your undoing. </td> Dolphin 88% Elephant 75% Tiger 69% Owl 69% Cat 63% Dog 56% Stag 56% Peafowl 13% What Animal Guide Would You Produce If You Could Cast A Patronus? (Harry Potter - Updated With Additional Results) created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as CPO Galen Tyrol, You never wanted to be a glamorous Viper pilot. You are happy knowing that without you to fix their birds, they cannot fly. You fell in love with the wrong girl, but is that so wrong? Maybe, but you don't really care. </td> CPO Galen Tyrol 88% Capt. Lee Adama (Apollo) 81% Commander William Adama 69% Tom Zarek 44% President Laura Roslin 44% Dr Gaius Baltar 38% Col. Saul Tigh 31% Number 6 25% Lt. Kara Thrace (Starbuck) 25% Lt. Sharon Valerii (Boomer) 13% What New Battlestar Galactica character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Hermione Granger, You're one intelligent witch, but you have a hard time believing it and require constant reassurance. You are a very supportive friend who would do anything and everything to help her friends out. </td> Albus Dumbledore 90% Hermione Granger 90% Remus Lupin 90% Harry Potter 65% Ginny Weasley 60% Sirius Black 55% Draco Malfoy 55% Ron Weasley 55% Severus Snape 45% Lord Voldemort 20% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

Thank you to cabri for this:

Thanks to an enthusiastic Browncoat contingent in town and the announcement of Jewel's appearance at the screening, among other things, the Vancouver charity screening for Equality Now has sold out.

And now I've been asked to go on our local Co-op Radio to talk about it.

From nine to ten pm this Thursday on Co-Op Radio (CFRO,102.7 FM) I'll be talking to co-hosts Susan and Michael Walsh about Serenity, the Charity Screenings, Browncoats, Joss and anything else remotely related ;D

I am currently doing Numfar's Dance of Joy in my chair as I just heard from Jewel (aka Kaylee) that she will be able to come and introduce the movie at our charity screening and do the draws for the door prizes.

Joss posted on Whedonesque last night - and added a comment today - and the responses are many. Here is his original post and a link to the comments, followed by my comment. I'm not putting it behind a cut because I want others to see it and repost it until everyone is outraged. BTW, his link went to the Equality Now site, not the video.

"Let's Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death. This is not my blog, but I don’t have a blog, or a space, and I’d like to be heard for a bit.

Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones.

There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.

I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”.

A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

“I’m sorry.”

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear.

The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up."

http://whedonesque.com/index2.php?comments=13271#175841

"I have read both of Joss's posts and each and every comment in this thread and through my tears have been thankful for many things: that there as so many thoughtful and caring people in this world as shown in this community, many of whom are already doing their part, and many for which this incident is a call to arms; that for the second year, I am organising the "Serenity Now/Equality Now" charity screening in my city - and this is one of the main reasons why; that we are fortunate to be living in a time where the world is changing rapidly and we can effect change. Sometimes it just takes one person to galvanize a whole movement - and if, for some of us, that is Joss, more power to him.

Based on his work and his words, I don't for one moment think that this horrendous action was the first time Joss was aware of violence against women. Joss has been talking (and I'm sure doing more than talking) about women's issues - and Equality Now - for many years. If the discussion here today has opened someone's eyes or spurred them to action, then I say good and am not going to critise anyone because they haven't done so before. Not only would it be judgemental of me, but I know that I haven't done as much as I could have - or as much as my (very strong) mother brought me up to have done.

Acts of violence against women, against gays, against people of race, against children, against anyone who is different or perceived to be weaker, are all too frequent in all parts of the world. I live in the third largest city in Canada and we have had several so-called 'honour' killings take place here. The ones that have occurred in another culture have been identified as such, but a lot of domestic violence is done in the name of 'honour', as someone said above.

We all need to do our part to end the violence and discrimination against all people in the world. Whether you choose to do that by contributing money or time to Equality Now or a local charity, by your work or by your art, or by raising your children in such a way that they will not be part of the violence doesn't matter. It's that we do something that does."

Thanks for listening.

Friday morning I got up and went into the bathroom to find an eviscerated bird behind the door. This made me think of Allan Sherman's "Twelve Days of Christmas": "On the Fifth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a statue of a lady with a clock where her stomach ought to be..." Okay, so I have weird thought processes!

This morning Natasha - the one who had brought in the bird - came in without her collar. She loses several a year, usually during a fight with another cat, and most of them I never get back even though they have a tag with her name and phone number on them. I usually buy in bulk, but since I bought a new collar for Tija for her birthday last month (she had been wearing the same one for several years now!), I didn't have any spares. I went to the pet store in the next block but they now close on Sunday.

So, I decided to look in the empty lot next door. There used to be a drug house there but now it's just overgrown, with some old wood and rusty tanks on the side. For some reason, Natasha loves it there. (She liked it even when the drug house was still going strong!) I walked along, trying not to step on a board that might have a nail sticking up or something else just as dangerous, and lo and behold, what did I find but her previous collar! And then I found the one she lost this morning. I'm sure there's probably at least one more in there, but I was happy, happy to find two. (Just in case anyone's wondering, I actually live in a very nice neighbourhood.)

Now if only the Canucks would start scoring on the power play!

I went to see "The Pursuit of Happyness" at my semi-neighbourhood theatre tonight. They have double bills for $7 - $5 on Mondays. I didn't feel like seeing "Dream Girls" so I went only for the second show which started at 9:45.

When the movie got out, I walked to the bus stop (10 minutes away) and didn't see a bus coming, so decided to walk the rest of the way home (30 minutes). Walking along 3rd Avenue, I heard a cat mewling, so crossed the street to make sure it was okay. It was doing what Natasha does if she's outside when I come home - sits on the cement wall and runs to meet me.

This cat looked rather like the cartoon Sylvester - mostly black with white feet and white on its face. It was quite round and had a short stump of a fuzzy tail. It was very affectionate, but meowed the whole time I petted it. I finally left it sitting on the sidewalk, but before I left, I told it to stay close to the apartment because there are raccoons, skunks and coyotes around. I was glad my girls were both inside.

I passed a few drunks on my way home (it's Saturday night, after all) - and in one apartment building I passed, it sounded as if someone was re-enacting a very bad porno movie!

I continued on my way and walked along the back alley to my building. As I got to the garden, I stopped to admire the weeding I had done this afternoon. (The back alley is very well lit - much better than the street.) I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and thought there was a cat in the empty lot next door - the one where Natasha loves to play. I turned to look, but the black and white animal was not a cat, but a full-grown skunk! It's been awhile since I've actually seen one, although their odor certainly has lingered on several occasions. I quickly walked away and got in the back door.

Thanks to Desktop Hippie for the lovely banner.

We're a go for the charity screening! We have a date - Saturday, June 23rd; a time: 1 - 5 pm, with doors opening at 1:45; a theatre: Pacific Cinematheque, 1131 Howe Street; and a film: "Serenity"!

This will be the second annual Serenity Now/Equality Now charity screening. Last year, 47 cities in five countries raised more than $69,000 for Joss's favourite charity, Equality Now, an organization that works to end violence and discrimination against women throughout the world.

This year 50 cities in 10 countries have expressed an interest in taking part and we're hoping to raise $100,000.

So get out your Jayne's hat, tune up your voice and tell all your friends! Dust off your lending set of "Firefly" DVDs. (If you don't have a lending set, then invite your friends over to watch it with you.) We want a sellout (210). If you haven't seen "Serenity" on the big screen, you're in for a treat - especially when you see it with a couple of hundred other fans.

We have door prizes! And we're working on a few other things. If you're willing to help out in any way - putting up posters, donating money, time or prizes, please contact me. We're looking for sponsors as well as donors. Sponsors & donors will be named on our blog/website (http://serenityscreen..., in the handout at the theatre, and in a presentation at the theatre (PowerPoint or other). The more money we get from sponsors, the more money we can give to Equality Now!

Tickets are on sale from members of the Organizing Committee, and from the blog through PayPal.

Tickets are $13 up to May 31st, $15 after May 31st. There will be a $1 service charge added to the tickets bought through PayPal to cover the cost of the transaction.

We have a lot of work to do between now and June 23rd to sell tickets and get the word out, but we are going to have a great time!

than catalyst2. There was only one questions I wasn't sure of: Who did the Grr Arggh at the end?

Congratulations! You know so much about "Once More with Feeling" that you might have written it yourself. Or, perhaps you're just like me and have watched the episode and commentaries a few too many times. Be proud of your geekyness!

Joss is Boss You scored 96 Knowledge!

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on Knowledge

Link: The Obsessive Buffy Musical Test written by lorilei75 on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test