Yep, it's another sequence of open letters, because that's an original gambit.

Dear book-buying public and one member of it in particular,

ISBNs are great things. In fact, I would go out on a limb and say they are the greatest invention of the twentieth century, and failing that, computers are the greatest invention of the twentieth century just because you can feed ISBNs into them.

But I am not a computer. I am a human being. And I appreciate you're a good customer and you're giving us a lot of business, but if you want a human being to track down two hundred and eighty books, then those archaic institutions of title and author are, you'll find, not only helpful but positively essential.

yours with eyestrain,
~Raven

---

Dear people who make Terry's Chocolate Oranges,

I no longer like Chocolate Oranges, not since the Christmas the library committee gave me fourteen^[1] of them.

OH MY GOD. I am rarely driven to incoherency by foodstuffs.

yours in quasi-orgasmic glee,
~Raven

---

Dear United States Department of Homeland Security^[2],

Fuck you.

~Raven

---

Dear Aaron Sorkin,

I strongly suspect I shall be volunteering to have your babies later tonight. Thank you for existing.

in bewildered gratitude,
~Raven

---

Dear fandom at large,

A question for you all. This is a very serious and important question.

In a prank war that had the Marauders on one side and Theta Sigma, Koschei and Ushas on the other, who would win?

It is keeping me up at night, naturally.

~Raven, who cannot sleep yet again and thus is procrastinating by making INCREDIBLY STUPID AND POINTLESS entries in LJ.

Seriously. Who'd win? (Prydonian = Slytherin, right? Maybe that would clinch it.)

I am going to bed before I bore myself to death.

---

[1] Or some such improbably large number.
[2] This open letter has been a long time in the planning, ever since my last encounter with the people in question, and this was the draft I felt comprehensively and precisely got to the point of the matter.

Studio 60 - The Cold Open

Oh, I am falling so hard for this show. So, so hard.

( Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip - The Cold Open )

In conclusion, this is a really awesome show. And now there are two problems. The first one is simple. This is an awesome show, it's funny, it's clever, it's got something to say, which means, naturally, that NBC are going to can it after thirteen episodes, just because.

Secondly, I'm going back to Oxford on Sunday. Which means I can't.. ahem... acquire the episodes the way I have been. 350 MB .avis are just too large to risk over the university ethernet. (I'm living in a college flat, which does have the advantage of free ethernet - the disadvantage is its being monitored, as all university networks are.) So I don't know how I'm going to watch it. (Ditto season two of Supernatural, but that's less of a problem given how it'll take me a while to polish off the first season.) Suggestions on a postcard comment - pretty please?

Other than watching Studio 60, today I went to work (quiet day, lots of customers, got called a "lady" by small child, was terrifying) and once I'd got back, did some academic work, too. I have decided I should probably get back into the swing of it before I go up. Making notes tonight, I wrote the following:

"In perfectionist liberalism, it matters that an individual choose well, for a given value of well. Such a state may not do more than bias - i.e., if so inclined, it may ban gay marriage but not gay sex. (Given its fundamental subjectivity, perhaps independent research would be necessary to sanction the value of gay sex to the liberal autonomy of the individual.)"

My brain in academic mode never ceases to scare me.