sundries

[rm]

- Talking to shipchan last night, and thinking about all the conversations I keep having with you all and the fact that I fucking dreamed about shitty ground school two nights ago and even missed that: I need to get back in the air. I need to get my damn pilot's license and my personal deadline for starting that process again is 24 months from now. Why 24 months? In 12 months I will be entirely out of debt. Then I want to build a cushion and meet various responsibilities in life here etc etc. And then, it's back to the most expensive of my most expensive hobbies. I refuse to let this go undone. I refuse to be cowed (and I was, I was so young, I'm surprised I managed as much as I did!) by something that only 10% of the people who take it up are women and then less than a third of them stay with it long enough to get licensed. People looked at me like I was a little girl when I flew, and I thought I could brazen through that the way I brazed through everything else at that age, by saying I was crazy and pretending I was tough. I'm sure I'd deal with lots of the same shit now, but my eyes are older and I've got all sorts of calm learnt from fencing and riding and yeah. So this is going to happen. Not soon, but soon enough.

- Survived fencing last night despite being on the rag and feeling unbelievably anemic. I got through it but did not free fence. The drama with my knee is slowly getting better.

- Gallifrey One! I'm so enjoying having been entirely right about this. And everyone was all "Gallifrey One never gets big actor guests." Uh-huh. People, when will you understand? I know things. Who, because she was overtired, called the release date move on Harry Potter 6 by accidentally talking about it like it had actually already happened? Anyway, current cosplay plans: Jack, Lucy Saxon, Diane.

- Looking at lots of photos from Governors Island in hopes of finding the shots taken of me, Nothing yet, but there's lots of scrumptiousness.

- You know what's totally fantastic? Candy corn.

- Story meeting tonight for I Did Not Know I Had Been Traveling. Yes, we have story meetings.

- So the economy. Here's the thing: Even if it's not dire, even if it's not a recession, depression or stock market nightmare that's going to fuck you up directly, when you live in NYC, this shit is invariably catastrophic, because obscene wealth keeps this city running. As much as it drives up the prices of all things, it is also what makes all things available, and pays the people who are waiters and maids and assistants. You can have not a dime in the market, but when Wall Street goes batshit here, it visits you. No question about it. But you know what? It's pretty dire, kids. On the plus side, the level of crazy in the, to quote Bill Gross, "shadow banking system," has been entirely out of fucking hand. Things had to correct sometime, the only problem is that the collapse of the hedge funds and all these new batshit instruments is now causing absolute havoc in the banking system us regular folk deal with and that's not good. It will get worse before it gets better.

- Fall weather makes me love everything more.

- Can lesbian please stop being a dirty word now? I just hate shit with this tonal quality.

- Meanwhile, if you are an adult woman, please do not refer to yourself as "girl." I do it sometimes too, and it's a terrible habit. Dear Everyone, Stop Trying to Be Small!

Comments

[iamradar.livejournal.com]

*Boggle* I don't know why anyone would think that Gallifrey One never got any 'big actors'. They have a twenty year history of attracting major guests!

[rm.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. But I seriously have had several snitty conversations with Boys Who Know More About Who Fandom Than You Girly Things that went like that, and I was like "hey, trust me on this, scuttlebutt that makes sense says...." and now I am doing the I Told You So dance and loving every second of it.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Damn. I still need to leave you two the comment love on the new installment. I've been focusing on a) sleep, b) getting back on the (writing) horse, and c) getting my office sorted. Must do this before end of week. Yes.

I love that you have story meetings, though. That's blindingly awesome.

"Dear Everyone, Stop Trying to Be Small!"

Word.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hehehe, I totally said to Kali the other day "I think he's working on sleep and you know, the actual novel, as opposed to the Internet porn" and she was all "oh, like we're supposed to be doing?" Er, yeah. So totally understood.

Story meetings = Spanish food and beer. Which got really stupid last time when I discovered that our bar of choice has gluten-free beer. She ordered some random other beer to be like "see I can order cool beer too" not realizing it came in this freakish bottle that was twice the size of a normal beer bottle, and she just kept smirking at me and making "mine is bigger than yours" jokes, the pure obnoxiousness of which can't really be conveyed without having actually met her. It was really damn funny though, even if we kept being interrupted by crazy homeless people yelling about the mayor we no longer have and the transit strike that happened two years ago.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I haven't quite gotten back on the book horse yet. I'm in serious need of rebuilding good habits after the two month disruption fest that started in late July. I've got about 900 good words on IEIT #22 at the moment, though that's subject to whims of plot and confidence. Apparently, I am not as resistant to certain criticisms as I thought. Ah well.

...and she just kept smirking at me and making "mine is bigger than yours" jokes, the pure obnoxiousness of which can't really be conveyed without having actually met her.

And suddenly, the desire to road trip intensifies.

[rm.livejournal.com]

You totally should come to New York sometime. We don't have a ton of space, but we do have actually separate rooms and even a cat-free zone that can support an air mattress.

And you and Kali would laugh your assess off. Where I am the one who is inconveniently responsible, she is the one who is always like "here, have _another_ drink." Which I think covers why in our HP epic she handles Lucius' characterization and I handle Snape's (a divide we don't have in the Torchwood work).

[mobobocita.livejournal.com]

I'm not a lesbian. I live with my girlfriend, I love her to death but I would never limit myself into just one sex. It's not about the title, it's about being attracted to who you are attracted to.

Right now, that's her. And Only Her.

And I hope it stays that way.

But I'm Bisexual, rather I like that title or not.

[rm.livejournal.com]

And that's good too. There's a reason I prefer queer (covers a lot of ground with fewer syllables). I just hated the way the article read so defensively.

[melebeth]

Exactly. Had she not inserted that "but I'm not a lesbian" it wouldn't have felt so ridiculously marginalizing. "I'm with a man, I've dated women, I'm not defining my sexuality in this magazine except to say that girls are hot" would have been fine, but adding that statement is so insulting.

[mobobocita.livejournal.com]

Right! I totally agree with that.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Adding that statement was probably the point of the article.
The Typical Hollywood Liberal is a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative who does coke.

[kenazfiction.livejournal.com]

Dear Everyone, Stop Trying to Be Small!

I try not to be small. In fact, one of the reasons I like being in my thirties is that don't look like a kid anymore. And I have rarely, if ever, referred to myself as a girl, though it's particularly tough when you're five feet tall. Someone actually patted my head a couple of weeks ago, and it was all I could to to restrain myself from slapping him. Instead, I said very firmly-- and fortunately, I have a relatively deep voice-- "That's a bit condescending. Do you mind?"

And he had the audacity to look at me like I was nuts.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

Bad tone: "I'm not a lesbian."

Better tone: "strangling a mountain ox with my bare hands."

[angstzeit.livejournal.com]

Ever tried candy corn with Spanish peanuts?

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

Hiya. Have you changed your email recently? Could you drop me a note at bethbethbeth [at] gmail?

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

Boy howdy do I understand the feeling of being ground-bound...you fly, I go to sea. It's not something the land folk understand, is it. Good luck getting back in the air.

[hiddenshallows.livejournal.com]

I honestly didn't read "I'm not a lesbian" as anything other than clarification. I mean yes, I can easily imagine how defensively she may have said it, but...do we really know she did? Would you have preferred it if she'd said "I'm not queer"? Or is it because she started an explanation about her sexuality with a negative? It's not great to do that, but she probably had a lot of people yelling a lot of questions at her, and I think might have been pretty hard not to respond instinctively.

Now, the whole revealing this story in GQ? That's a rant I could get behind...:P

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

Oh god. That's like the "I'm not a feminist, but..." shtick. She doesn't even bother to cast it as a one time thing (not much better, granted) but goes on to drool over other women as well?? Riiiiiight. (Tho I'm happy to say bisexual for myself or sometimes omnivorous after that movie, damn what was it called? Has "chocolate" in the title...)

As for the "girl" thing, word. I've had a lot of trouble removing it from my vocabulary as well. In a sort of related thing as well, saying a simple "thank you" when complimented instead of deprecating it...all these things add up to smallifying oneself...

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

I actually felt more accomplished after my first solo flight than I did after I passed my private-pilot flight test. I was lucky enough to learn to fly in Utah, where the scenery was amazing, yet the mountains weren't too big to fly around, or among.

Alas, the last time I flew was just over 20 years ago.

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'm at odds with your statement about the "girl" thing. Mostly because I *don't* equate "small" with "bad." Let me explain. One of the things that concerns me about societal movements is its infatuation with the Big, and the suggestion that Big things are the only things that matter. Take the field of medicine, for example, and the prestige given to emergency medicine rather than preventative care. The latter involves small steps, and often in a manner where there is little direct "credit" to be given. Whereas emergency medicine is seen to be big. And gets more prestige. And more societal focus.

Similar parallels can be drawn in visible war movements as compared to less visible (and smaller, behind the scenes) negotiations. Societal focus on the big splashy figurehead rather than their appointees and hires, who are smaller in position but often cumulatively have much greater effect.

But big is not always the most efficient or effective way to proceed (note that I am not trying to say the converse--I agree that sometimes big can be more effective, too). An amount of resources spent on little steps can often have greater effect than the same amount of resources spent on large steps.

And so to the extent that a critique of the word "girl" is linked with a suggestion that girl=small and small=terrible, it concerns me. I agree that there are problematic uses of the word "girl"--especially given the asymmetric use of the word "boy". But me, I want to be whatever size lets me do more "good" (another vague problematic term I know) for the world, rahther than automatically "big" (or small).

[cruentum.livejournal.com]

Story meetings sound like the best of fun, indeed.

Re your last post - I've been cosnidering lj idol for about two minutes in serious contemplation and then went "hell - I don't even LIKE to talk about myself".

Re lesbian and queer and all that - ah yes. 'm ranted out on that for the moment.

Also ... maybe I should come up with a more thoughtout comment than Fuckin Awesome for your last installment of the Jack/Ianto..

[norda.livejournal.com]

In my next life I want to fly planes. It's in my blood [daughter of a pilot], but the eyesight limits such things.

[miep.livejournal.com]

did you join the 99s? my mom was a 66 for a while before she got her license. the 99s were an interesting bunch back in the 80s, with lots of WACs and WASPs along with society wives, EAA enthusiasts, and aerobats...