grahambinns.com

You'll all remember, no doubt, the fuss that kicked up when Livejournal owners SixApart started censoring and disabling journals based on some fairly specious grounds (and which, eventually, led to them back-pedalling at great speed).

Well. dear reader, it looks like it's happening again. From CNet:

The most recent saga over user-generated Harry Potter artwork appears to have started late last week, when at least two users, "ponderosa121" and "elaboration," reported receiving notices from a LiveJournal abuse team member who informed them that their accounts had been "permanently suspended." (One user tracking the situation says an "undetermined" number of other Harry Potter artists have also been suspended in recent weeks, but we've yet to get official confirmation on that.)

The reason for the deletions? The users' journal entries contained "drawings depicting minors in explicit sexual situations," which represented a violation of LiveJournal's policies, according to copies of the letters posted by their recipients.

Let's hope it takes less time to sort out this time around.

The BBC is carrying a (naturally very important) story about a cat in the states who can apparently predict death. From the article:

Oscar has a habit of curling up next to patients at the home in Providence, Rhode Island, in their final hours.

...

A doctor who treats patients at the home said she believed there was probably a biochemical explanation, rather than the cat being psychic.

Which just goes to show that the Doctor doesn't read the right books. The cat isn't psychic at all. But cats can see Death:

Death is not invisible. Most people just refuse to acknowledge him for who he is, unless he insists. Under normal circumstances, only those of a magical disposition (e.g. witches and wizards), children and cats can see him, or allow themselves to see him.

Once again, Pterry is found to be accurate. Also, interestingly, Firefox doesn't seem to think that Pterry is a typo. Oh, wait. It does. Never mind then.

Hamas 'Mickey Mouse' killed off (BBC)

A Palestinian TV station has killed off a controversial Mickey Mouse lookalike that critics said was spreading anti-US and anti-Israeli messages to children.

The Hamas-affiliated al-Aqsa channel aired the last episode on Friday, showing the character, Farfur, being beaten to death by an "Israeli agent".

...

In the final broadcast an actor said to be an Israeli agent tries to buy the land of the squeaky-voiced Mickey Mouse lookalike.

Farfur brands the Israeli a "terrorist" and is beaten to death.

He was killed "by the killers of children", Saraa says.

This tickles me a bit. The headline, especially.

Germany imposes ban on Tom Cruise (BBC)

Germany has banned the makers of Tom Cruise's new movie from filming at military sites in the country because the actor is a Scientologist.

In other news, my remote feed (Twitter, Flickr, etc.) aggregator thingumy appears to be buggered. Ho hum; I'll fix it later.

[Edit]

Well, the remote feeds thing is fixed, though it still needs a coat of looking at. Alas, the BBC have now amended their headline in the RSS feed, which is a shame, although they've left it as-is in the story itself, which just seems... slack, really.

Mur Lafferty, writer, podcaster and tiara-wearing queen of wannabe writers is putting Geek Fu Action Grip on indefinite hiatus for reasons which I have no business repeating here (go there, use ears, understand).

I first came across Mur and her work when, Googling for writing resources, I found I Should Be Writing. I subscribed to Geek Fu some time after that. Mur's great gift is in making one feel like an equal, no matter the subject matter. Geek Fu will be missed, though I'm glad that ISBW will continue since it gives me a great deal of motivation (and also acts as an archive of those bits of advice that I need to have repeated to me constantly).

For more of Mur's work, such as the highly acclaimed Heaven and Hell podiobooks and their successor, Earth, take a look at geekfuactiongrip.com and ishouldbewriting.com.