Dreaming of Butterflies

It's a good morning :D.

I am over the moon this morning to read that Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, is expected to declare that patients are able to pay for private treatment alongside NHS treatment without being penalised and having funding withdrawn from them. This policy didn't exist in previous years when I've paid out of pocket for things my trust would not fund/was slow to fund, wasn't being enacted locally when we went private to pay for some of Ezekiel's treatment and I was absolutely shocked to discover that any trusts were indulging in it at all.

A patient and their family being able to pay for one aspect of their treatment does not mean that they can afford to pay for everything and it makes a mockery of the nhs to penalise them for doing so.

I know some doctors have made arguments that explicitly allowing patients to purchase drugs and treatment that the nhs doesn't fund will be a slippery slope towards a two-tier NHS, but withdrawing treatment from those who need it is not the appropriate way to fignt this. If it happens, we need to fight it off case by case and trust by trust instead.

The Open Rights Group event last night was fantastic. Neil Gaiman is a very effective and persuasive speaker who makes a very good case. He talked for awhile on Piracy Vs Obscurity and which was the greater danger to writers, the future of publishing, the oppertunities available to new authors via the internet and print to order publishing and the improvements in sales he'd seen after making material available for free online. He then took questions from a varied audience of techies, geeks and counterculturites who created quite a comprehensive discussion - I could see someone transcribing everything from where we were sitting and will endeavour to link to anything posted online so you can all have a read.

He also had some rather amusing positive comments to make on fanfiction and interpretation of original works; including some very amusing ones on slashfiction. His ultimate statement on the topic being 'there is no wrong way to come to something you enjoy' which puts him firmly outside the Robin Hobb camp.

This evening has been quieter, we settled in to watch a cute little movie about a queer volleyball team in Thailand called The Iron Ladies. It was all kinds of silly and left us with smiles on our faces - which is all I ask on an evening like this.

Lovefilm has been sending us some pretty decent queer movies recently - we'd started to despair of finding anything we liked until the cutest lesbian romance flick ever dropped through the door - Saving Face was good enough that I'm actually looking to go out and find myself a copy, which isn't something I do very often. I rather like it when we get to have some nice sappy rom coms which aren't teenage coming out movies, where we get a happy ending and nobody dies horribly kthx. Hopefully they'll keep sending us more :).

Reports of voting machines selecting the wrong candidate when people come in and press their buttons, attempts to have large numbers of new voters stricken from the voting rolls, some heavily spurious half truths being thrown at the ACORN voter registration drives and the use of the flawed Social Security 'no match' system to put peoples right to vote in jeopardy ... it must be the final days of a republican election campaign!

Cedar over at Taking up too much Space has a few interesting videos on this one - including some rather nice analysis from MSNBC on the current situation.

In more amusing and less political news, last night I was introduced to the delightful music of Tim Minchin and I think I'm in love :D.

Autumn is an odd place to be in; I love the taste, the smell and the feel of it but the lack of light or something similar puts me in an odd place almost every time. I end up doing various silly and not so silly things to walk through this and out the other side (most having at least a parting acquaintance with chocolate ...) and fortunately the consequences rarely last any longer than the impulse itself.

This year I suffered from a fit of nostalgia (among other things) and started playing another online rpg. I'm not sure quite what I was expecting - the only real enjoyment I've ever had from them is the social side (a good group of friends to do something with can make almost anything look better) - the actual game systems generally make me feel like I have a second job or am being encouraged to run mazes for treats like some sort of lab mouse.

For this particular piece of silliness I chose to follow a couple of old friends into Lord of the Rings online - an attempt by turbine/codemasters to, if not break the World of Warcraft mold, certainly stretch it a little in some new ways. With the Tolkien mythos to draw on they have a lot of material to work with and game system wise they've managed a few new twists on the same old classes and systems. They've even managed to work in something that feels like an overall storyline via the 'book quests' telling the epic story of the game - allowing you to play your part in the defense of the free people of middle earth while the fellowship are making their journey. This was novel enough to hold my interest at first, but after a couple of weeks the problems of all classic level based MMOs started to show through the cracks - leaving me wondering increasingly what on earth I was doing there.

Long story shortened, after four weeks of trial (with another two weeks before I'd have had to pay anything) I've closed the account and uninstalled the game - if there's still a relationship for me to have with these people I'll choose a more sensible medium in which to do it.

With that in mind, I'm going to go read a book - Locke and Jean demand my attention :).

I have escaped!

Having pottered into hospital at the crack of doom this morning (which was rather pleasant, more on that in a minute) for the exciting happy fun of a Cystoscopy and Dilation, managed to be first up on the list then had the long and amusing wait for a consultant to show up .. (Consultants are a very busy one-night-stand, just a little more likely to call you later ... Nurses are more of a committed relationship with lots of dating :P) I have leveraged the magic of 'we need your bed ...' to make my escape off the ward, out the door, into a Taxi and Home.

It is very, very pleasant to be home; where I have my own thermostat (and nobody is trying to bake me to death with it), where Ezekiel, Fergus and the Lemur are waiting for me, where the internet works properly and all my stuff is - this is a much more pleasant venue to deal with the post anesthetic befuddledness.

I should hear something within the next few days about what they did and didn't do, and what they did or didn't find - they're sending letters out and I have a followup appointment in about a weeks time. Wish me luck :).

The walk in this morning was one of those random little special moments ... with the sun getting ready to hibernate I was walking in the dark and watching it turn to early dawns half light as the clouds faded in - surrounded by busy people heading to work, delivering things, Jogging very determinedly - it really made me smile for some reason, something about being surrounded by all that life I don't usually see when my mornings are starting here in the den of iniquity. Given how quickly they got me bundled off and put under once I arrived it meant I really didn't have time to worry about anything too.

The rest of this week is shaping up to be blessedly mundane, with a couple of exceptions. I plan to get some more Uni work done, get my ducks in a row for the training I need to run in the first week of November to make sure my going on holiday goes smoothly and otherwise probably potter about playing games and reading - I have the second Gentleman Bastards book (Locke Lamora and pirates? a match made in heaven) and Phillip Reeve's 'Here Lies Arthur' to entertain me with the written word, and The Witcher EE and World of Goo competing to hook me electronically in a cracky fashion.

Then just before the weekend there's another meeting of the london group - where the topic of a certain Guardian columnist is bound to loom large, then an intreguing encounter with Neil Gaiman on Friday giving a talk on Piracy and Obscurity organised by the Open Rights Group.

For now, I'm off to go wobble about the house and bibble incoherently have fun :).

I saw this GLSEN PSA this morning when someone posted it to a livejournal gorup I read and it really makes me smile - this is one of those ones I'm kinda sick of having to call people on all the time.

We saw Heather Nova kick sixteen kinds of ass in London last night; Some songs from the new album, a lot of old classics and rather delightfully, Bastian Juel on Bass and backing vocs. Lead guitar was, of course, the ever wonderful Berit Fridahl who played up a fucking storm - I've never ever heard her put a foot wrong when she's playing. (Also, she reminds me amusingly of Katchoo from Strangers in Paradise which makes me grin).

There was also some amusement over a sign, but it requires extracting a photo from the depths of cameraphone purgatory so it'll have to wait until after work :).

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now (even if we don't speak often or ever) please post a comment with a completely made up, fictional memory of you and me.

It can be anything you want - good or bad - but it has to be fake.

When you're finished, and if you do that sort of thing, you could try posting this too and seeing what people come up with.

Autumn has definitely put down roots and decided to stay, something that brings me a lot of joy - I rather enjoy the season. Particularly the high, clear blue skies; both for the crispness and for the extra light - a very positive thing for me in winter. It also means it's about time to dig out Is this Desire, as it always makes me think of Autumn.

The rower continues to work out well, having the rowpro software tell me when to get off my butt is a fantastic spur to my sick, lazy, disorganised self. I think I might actually be in for the long haul with this one which gives me a good feeling - it's nice to get a little 'wow, I'm in control of this!' boost sometimes. Besides, I'd rather not put down a layer of winter fat for hibernation this year - I intend to stay awake all winter ;).

We're all looking forward to heading stateside next month, there are plans, plots and nefarious designs being cooked up on both sides of the atlantic and the anticipation seems to be infecting everything - I've even found myself enjoying my work more where I've been busy working to ensure proper cover and a smooth handover (which seems to be going well - I'm feeling quite dynamic and together today compared to a fortnight ago). It's going to be a hell of a flight (we don't usually go nonstop), but the thought of three weeks in the desert with eldest and family pottering about watching movies, playing games and wandering around locally is blissful. Given that we'll be very near to a busy General Aviation airport I'm hoping I might be able to get away with some flying time too! Fingers crossed.

In other news, Convention Anti Harrasment Project seems like a very sound idea to me, and would be well worth a look for people who do the convention circuit regularly (it's been more than a few years since I last did) and what the hell is up with Stonewall nominating Julie Bindel for a 'best gay journalist of 2008' award? I can't believe some of the things that come from her direction when she puts pen to paper. I've sent them a letter about it and if you take any issue yourself, put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and let them know what you think.

Zenobia has a fantastic post up about Carol Kaye, an absolutely fantastic Bass player with a credit list longer than longcat.

There's a very good video attached, go and give it a watch. This is the kind of thing that frequently makes me resolve 'I need to start spending more time playing again ...'