sundries

[rm]

Patty downloaded a bunch of her trip photos from her camera to her computer last night. Many of them are stunning to a breathtaking degree. I'm hoping she posts hers soon. I still have several islands worth to share with you all, but am a bit swamped right now.

Headshots February 5th. Okay, actually more like headshots, compcard, genderqueer author promo shot, and a video headshot slate thing. Look, I've needed to do it forever. That's all I've got to say about that. I'm having another neurotic convo with the photog today (me being neurotic, not him).

In recognition that my life does its awesomest shit when things become oddly circular, I'm now feeling ridiculously sanguine about something that was making kinda hysterical and edgy yesterday.

This is the item about which I have nothing to say.

Consweet!

Meanwhile, I love when I tell people what to do, and they do it, and then everyone gets what they want.

Lots of new updates on the Gallifrey schedule. I'm now on three panels. I suspect this is relatively close to final for me and everyone else now. I'm pleased by everything except that I'll be missing Tony interview Georgia Moffett, but then who the hell ever went to Gally for what happens on stage? So I have the death/mourning panel, immediately followed by the crossplay panel. I've said since the beginning that I simply will not cosplay at the death/mourning panel both because it's too weird for everyone and because it's a distraction from the material and because I feel like it's all sorts of disrespectful and I also might cry, but if I don't, then I'm not in cosplay for, you know, A FUCKING COSPLAY PANEL THAT I REALLY CARE ABOUT.

Another review of my play. This one awful. But not in a scathing precise awful way that I can actually take to heart, just in a "it's about whores and a retard and I don't get it" way. They also didn't get a spoof of Othello, so it's cool.

help_haiti auctions are winding up. Items with no bids yet are here.

hakeber continues to follow the earthquake swarm. Generally, aftershocks continue to go down in magnitude. So the 6.1 that hit Haiti today? That's extra alarming.

Starting in 2011, NYTimes.com will charge for access to articles over a certain quota per month. I can tell you right now, this isn't going to work.

Sexual transgression and digital armies -- when technology makes it easy for everyone to catch anyone, in which directions are our values going to shift? Hate the tone of the piece, love the question. Fanfic and original fic writers looking at how we get from our current values to a different set of sexual mores, look here.

Men, women, success and marraige:

Ms. Zielinski, the fashion stylist, said her best friend, a man, told her once: “ ‘You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?’ He laughed, but I found that pretty depressing.”

Robert B. Parker has died. He's the dude who brought us the Spencer books. I got into them for a brief while, because my ex was really into them. They were airport books for me and of interest because of gender -- men were men and women were women and maybe I could figure out how to do _something_ from them. I didn't. And then I got bored. But I was fond of them, and they were friends when I needed them.

Comments

[ex-adarog.livejournal.com]

Boy, with "friends" like that, Ms. Zielinski doesn't need any enemies, does she?

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

That is the funniest icon I've seen so far this week.

[ex-adarog.livejournal.com]

It's not completely appropriate to the spirit of my reply, but it was the closest thing I had on hand. *g*

[gement.livejournal.com]

Those don't look like chicken pants to me.

They look like BIG GAY SWAN PANTS.

I love that Swan Lake with all my pervy little heart.

I love that ballet, too.

[ex-adarog.livejournal.com]

Aha, you recognized those chicken pants!

My husband dubbed them "chicken pants" when we first saw the ballet. Then we noticed that actually most birds have little feathers on their legs down to the joint, so we started calling *them* chicken pants. Except on falcons, when you have to call them "falcon pants" or else you get chomped. *g*

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

Re: the success and marriage link. I read that this morning too.

Elaine Richardson, who is in her 50s, is divorced and owns a health care consulting firm in Westchester, said that men “call you high maintenance if you look like you don’t need anyone to take care of you.”

Huh? Tangent, but WTF does "high maintenance" even mean, anyway? That's like the all-purpose insult for women. Doesn't work and expects to be taken care of in the manner to which she's become accustomed, has too many emotional needs, is oddly attached to her blow dryer... and now "high maintenance" means you don't require anything from anyone else? I do not think this term means what people think it means, or even know. I hate that term with a passion.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I read that and thought my eyes were going to cross. Self-sufficient ≠ high-maintenance.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

It's like some kind of code which means something, but I don't know what.

Bitchy? Up herself? (Without saying those things outright?) I don't even know. But it doesn't mean "likes nice things, works hard and pays for 'em herself".

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think part of the code is "a woman always wants from a man better than what she can get for herself." So if a woman can afford a nice house and good jewelry and a great car -- shit... a man's gonna have to give her even more expensive stuff.

Such bullshit.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

I think it bugged my husband mentally for about a month, when my salary surpassed his. I had always made considerably less.

And then I got another raise a few years later and he was like: "WOOHOO! Shopping!"

High maintenance.

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

I once went buggy on a guy who had told me that he had had a crush on me but never did anything about it because "you looked like you didn't need me."

Well, bucko, I don't "need" chocolate cake but it make smy life better. Would I be more attractive to you if I was lying dead of starvation on my cold, dark apartment floor because I couldn't feed myself or pay my bills?

At that visual I think something clued in because he just sat quietly for a while and then apologized for being an idiot.

We never have gone out but over the intervening years I have seen him "pay court" to women he might not have looked at twice when he was younger.

some of them can learn. Sigh. The others,... sigh.


Ekatarina, decidely *not* starving, cold or sitting in the dark

[moljn.livejournal.com]

The only way that quote makes sense is if "look like you don't need anyone to take care of you," means that you look like you spend a lot of money on your (self-sufficient and/or business-like) appearance.

[moljn.livejournal.com]

Or what rm said.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I don't know. If you're taking care of your own maintenance, don't know why that'd bother your partner! :D

[moizissimo.livejournal.com]

To me, high maintenance is that person you're always waiting for because they need to look perfect. They spend all their money on clothes/makeup/accessories. They need to be in the centre of attention all the time.

A relationship with that kind of person requires a lot of maintenance. It's not necessarily insecurity, but it sometimes looks very similar.

But I also like rm's explanation.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

You know, one of these days I really need to pick your brains about headshots. Vanitas, vanitatum, et omnia vanitas, for sure, and it may already be too late; but I've always kind of wanted to try to get some good ones done before I have so much sag that no amount of photographic skill will compensate for it.

[drfardook.livejournal.com]

I can't say I'm surprised to see that professional women are having trouble finding partners with relative equality in their careers. Having two people in a relationship who believe they've been financially successful because they're uncompromising in the pursuit of their goals doesn't bode well for a shared future.

I really don't see that as a failure of either gender, just a consequence of training people to be absolutely unwavering and unbending about their sense of personal accomplishment. Why would you turn it off just because you're involved with someone?

The bit about having problems in relationships with men who do have lower incomes/career goals. That's all gender.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

Having two people in a relationship who believe they've been financially successful because they're uncompromising in the pursuit of their goals doesn't bode well for a shared future.

I don't know that people who are successful always believe that about themselves though.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

So I have the death/mourning panel, immediately followed by the crossplay panel.

Do you have like 5-10 minutes in which you might be able to do a quick change? I'm assuming you'll be going from a basic suit into your Jack ensemble in which case you'll already have you chest bound and your hair done. If you wear the shirt you plan on wearing for Jack all you need to do is change your trousers and shoes, throw on the vortex manipulator and The Coat you're done. I'll be at both panels if you need someone to hold all the stuff.

[rm.livejournal.com]

No time. None. I think my thought is that that's the day I'll wear the green shirt (which I think Jack wears in canon all of once), and quickly ditch the accessories between panels and then try to be funny about it right off so we can just move past it, like immediately. But.... yuck. I think I'm going to build in some "hide in the room" time immediately after those back to back panels finish, as I'll probably feel really weirded out by then.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

Are there any aspects of crossplaying that you'll need to be wearing in order to demonstrate any of your points such as posture, fit, accessorizing?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Nah, although maybe I will bring one of the suit jackets down -- because the suits are not for cosplay, but damn, helpful to other people.

Oh god, I didn't tell you how I wound up talking to some British guy about Torchwood on the cruise and only like ten minutes later realized I was wearing the pin-stripe suit and the brick shirt. I wanted to die.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

Hehe. I bet he didn't even notice. I think we're more conscious of those things than other people.

I just found out last night that one of James' friends gave him a Torchwood wristwatch for Christmas even though he's never watched the show. They figured since he's a Whovian he must be a fan.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Bwah!

I think he didn't even notice either, but seriously, there we were, talking about mourning rituals and fandom:

Him: "Children of Earth, bloody fantastic that was! Oh, I used a bad word, sorry!"
Me: "Right, so, you know people started leaving flowers at Mermaid Quay, where the tourist office was, right?"
Him: "No! Brilliant! We're up north now, so..."
Me: "So I started wondering, not why does this happen, but why doesn't it always? Why's Ianto special? And of course, he's not... there's all these other characters it's happened with too."
Him: "Goodness. Dumbledore, right!"
Me: "Well, all sorts of stuff went on with Harry Potter!"
Him: "This is exciting"
Me: *gesturing a lot and noticing my cuffs* Oh FucK.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

Hahaha! I love how the conversation so easily flowed from Torchwood into Harry Potter.

Pin stripes and brick dress shirts were fashionable before Ianto Jones but he does make them more awesome. . .and complicated.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I kept telling myself that. Over and over. But I was like.... "oh god, time to eat my dinner now, shit shit shit" in the moment.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

While I agree NYT will fail to sustain itself with that policy, most newspapers already do charge for access to their archives -- if you want something older than 30 days ago, you have to pay for it. Sometimes bnet archives stuff, and of course if you have access to a university library they usually have paid access to the archives, but NYT is just attempting to apply a system-in-place to their current circulation.

NYT is already epic failing in that you have to log in to view their site. I won't go there anymore. I actually read a really interesting article about its current CEO, and how he's a moron. :D

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

NYT is already epic failing in that you have to log in to view their site.
Yeah, I just created a spurious 'nym to log in, simply because there are occasional nuggets of interest that get linked to by the likes of ontd_political, or that I've spotted the header on a news-stand and I want to see the follow-up later.

I actually read a really interesting article about its current CEO, and how he's a moron.

Whereabouts? *intrigued*

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

It was in Vanity Fair a few months ago, and it's incredibly long:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/05/new-york-times200905

It doesn't actually outright call him a moron, but it makes it fairly obvious he's not well-thought-of; too conservative a thinker, not quite bright enough, not quite fast enough, suffering from inheriting the thing rather than earning it.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

...righto.

Irony - when I clicked to see the article RM linked in NYT about "oh hai we gonna charge", first thing I saw was an advert for The Economist.

[sethg]

Thanks to the Internet, anyone with an outside-the-norm gender or sexuality has a much easier time finding and communicating with similar people.

Thanks to the Interent, anyone seeking to enforce gender or sexuality norms has a much easier time rounding up a posse to embarass someone who deviates from them.

Both of these are simultaneously true. My mind reels.

[gement.livejournal.com]

I keep struggling with this. I try to check against a behavioral standard of "If I wouldn't want my enemies to behave this way, I shouldn't either," and the last year of Opinion Swarms has grated on me in that respect, even when I've participated in them.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Hey, have you seen this review in the NY Times for a book about the A-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I am extremely conflicted: one of the one hand, I’ve enjoyed other books by the author, Charles Pellegrino; on the other hand, it contains extremely graphic eyewitness accounts — the bits quoted in the review almost made me lose my lunch.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?

Er, any man worth having?

[demotu.livejournal.com]

"BUT WHEN WILL YOU HAVE TIME TO MAKE ME DINNER, WOMAN?"

...

Nah. I mean, maybe that sort of thing plays into it for some people, but as someone who used to be the more educated and potentially "successful" (in ways defined by a lot of fucked up class shit on his part) person in a relationship, I can affirm that there exist men who (a) have their self-esteem threatened by their partners and (b) expect their female partners to be on top of household stuff, regardless of who actually cares more/is around more.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

Yes, and they aren't worth having. :)

[demotu.livejournal.com]

So I realized. After three years, at least! Your point is made!

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Wrt the NYT article on wealth and marriage, my question is (as is typically the case with this and the many similar NYT articles on marriage and gender relationships) do any significant percentage of men actually believe this crap, or is this idea solely found among a small subset of wealthy New Yorkers. I don't expect most men to get the same messages from their parents that I got growing up (which was quite literally "marry a wealthy woman"), but this sort of nonsense seems unlikely to be all that widespread (or at least I hope that it isn't).

[gement.livejournal.com]

This one isn't just NYT, I'm afraid. I've seen it both in other media articles and in the struggles of my dual-income friends when the husband gets laid off.

There's an ugly well of social expectations under there, and the water's all manky.