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Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Ways To Give:

redstapler linked me to editrx, who just can't get a break -- she was featured last week for assistance with a medical dental emergency, and now is facing foreclosure on her home. She's looking for advice on fighting the foreclosure and help finding a lawyer in New Hampshire.

adelheide is raising $500 to get her past-due car insurance restored. She's selling jewelry to raise the funds, and has a post up here with links to her LJ sales posts and Etsy shop.

pocketmouse linked to a fundraiser for Daniel, a freelance artist who has just undergone surgery for a brain tumor. He's without insurance and facing bills in the range of $450K. The fundraiser has reached its goal, but every little bit helps.

v_mures and Paganaidd are raising money for security deposit and first month's rent on a small house to help their friend Heather get into health-safe housing. The donation page is here and there's more information on Heather's predicament and the difficulties of multiple chemical sensitivities here.

Stephanie linked me to a fundraiser for Chloe, a Rottweiler who needs surgery for a torn ACL & CCL.

Fans Helping Fans:

happi_feet is in the process of purchasing a piece of property in Tennessee, and is looking for someone to occupy the house on the property on the cheap, in return for cleaning up the land around it and repairing some aspects of the house.

adsartha is setting up shop as am editor and translator, with particular interest in helping self-publishers, at Word Alchemist, and is looking for advice on advertising her services -- places to post, ways to advertise, et cetera.

ljgeoff is looking at purchasing and renovating a house in Charlotte, Michigan, to turn it into a low-cost, accessible housing cooperative. There's an indiegogo fundraiser in the works, but first she needs help making a video for the fundraiser. There's more information on the process of fundraising and the kind of help she needs here.

News To Know:

tealin brought to my attention that there was a dreadful anti-Islam film made that has led to protests and deaths over its depiction of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Now actors are coming forward to tell their side of the story -- specifically that they filmed an entirely different script, and were dubbed over without their knowledge or consent.

brainwane let me know that the entire 91-episode run of Little Mosque On The Prairie, a light-hearted sitcom about a community of Muslims living in a small Canadian town, is now available free for viewing on Hulu.com. I've heard awesome things about the show, check it out!

Just For Fun:

goseaward linked me to a fascinating article on the Faces of CMU. Startling, but awesome.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can always post items for my attention in comments here (or on any post) or email me at copperbadge at gmail dot com. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help (or ask for help!). Remember, brevity is the soul of RFM.

(no subject)

"Maybe this week will be easier. I got a lot done last week! Surely my boss has figured out I'm working on multiple projects and will not give me any more work to do."

Ahahahahah. Hahaha.

Better overworked than under, though!

Also, I did a fanfic. You can blame Mark Ruffalo and his hair.

Title: Black AmEx
Rating: PG (Gen)
Summary: Bruce isn't sure he wants to use a credit card Tony gave him. Steve isn't sure he even knows how.
Notes: Mageflower kept posting images of Mark Ruffalo, which made me realize that appearance-wise he oscillates between "indigent" and "fashion model" with absolutely no inbetween. I thought that was a pretty good inspiration for a fic.

Here on Dreamwidth
Here on AO3
And a special one-off by request, Here on Tumblr.

Avengers: Black AmEx

Title: Black AmEx
Rating: PG (Gen)
Summary: Bruce isn't sure he wants to use a credit card Tony gave him. Steve isn't sure he even knows how.
Notes: Mageflower kept posting images of Mark Ruffalo, which made me realize that appearance-wise he oscillates between "indigent" and "fashion model" with absolutely no inbetween. I thought that was a pretty good inspiration for a fic.

Here on Dreamwidth
Here on AO3
And a special one-off by request, Here on Tumblr.

(no subject)

Buried in books!

I keep meaning to review Too Big To Know by David Weinberger, because it's like three books in my past by now, but I can't really come up with anything to say about it. It's supposedly about the way we look at "knowing", and how the internet has changed that, but it seems to be a lot of random, sometimes informative statements backed up by anecdote, most of which I already knew. I don't actually blame him for this. It's god-damned hard for anyone to figure out what to do with the internet.

Rather than knowing-by-rducing to what fits in a library or a scientific journal, we are now knowing-by-including every draft of every idea in vast, loosely connected webs. -- p. 5

And I kept just thinking, well, yes, and? So that's pretty much my review. Good start, now what? (It's a very long book for being a "good start". Library yes; purchase, no.)

I also read Blow Up And Other Stories by Julio Cortazar, as part of my continuing education in magical realism. Some of them I liked very much, particularly the shorter ones. That sounds awful, but honestly, I think long form just isn't his forte. I could not care less about the heroin-addicted jazz-playing time-traveler that takes up the more-or-less last quarter of the book.

( Cut for spoilers )

Cortazar is clearly a talented writer and his prose is well worth reading even in translation, and for me it's educational because, well, magical realism. But this is another "library yes, purchase no" book.

Wouldn't mind owning a copy of Axolotl, though.