sundries

[rm]

Trying more of this hyper-focus thing today. Yesterday I got scads done, cleaned all the things and got to have a nice night with Patty. I may also have solved the cruise conundrum (anyone have feelings about Celebrity as a line?).

I may also have solved the dress conundrum. Yes, I say I don't like one-shouldered numbers and worry black is too sedate, but this is a good dress-up/dress-down dress and it's not about the dress anyway, it's about my neckline and my tattoo. I don't want people to be looking at the dress. I do worry it's too safe, or that it won't fit right, but I suppose, order now, have time to solve issues later (because, among other things, I might want to get it shortened so it's just above my knee instead of just below it).

How and why false confessions happen.

Report cards from the Manhattan Trade School for Girls. Weirdly enough, I used to live across the street from there in the Russell Sage building. During the years I lived there there was one shop room on the first floor with frosted windows that someone had leaned a big teddy bear up against on the inside. I can't tell you how many times I walked by their at night with friends who were startled by this shadowy figure and, then, after noticing it that first time, never, ever stopped being creeped out by it.

Vodoun, stigma and status in Benin.

The next steps in the marriage equality battle in New York.

theferrett has something on real names vs. usernames. I cannot speak to the developer-related aspects of this, but one of the valuable things about usernames are that they make engagement with pseudonoymous identities explicit, as opposed to the murky world of "yes, you can just lie about you real name if you need a pseudononymous identity." Being out, about all sorts of things, is a privilege, and I think it's more generous to users and better for online culture, when we can say "here is my mask or shield and I stand by it as my identity and my brand" as opposed to "here is my real name I may or may not be lying about."

Last night on Angel: Monster of the week episode; girl gets turned into a werewolf, plot stolen from half-a-dozen places. On the other hand, I feel like in my ongoing "OMG, RTD, I see what you did there!" tirade, this is the most important episode yet.

There's the end -- where we have this gorgeous team, chilling out, awkwardly, in their fearless leader (to whom they can't quite connect) pad overlooking the city. There's Spike and his struggle against hell (is something moving in the dark, Blondiebear? That's what I want to know). There's the discussion of Angel and his ability to have relationships. There's the mistrust of Gunn and his enhancements (don't use alien artifacts for your own amusement, kids). There's Wesley inability to say anything without sounding slightly smarmy (is that intentional in the performance or just an awkward side-effect of my having seen Torchwood first and the way Denisof sort of smirks his way through every line?) There's the way Angel's like "fine, eat the other guy, I don't give a shit."

All the brutality and love hung on a sort of pointless frame that I think of as so emblematic of the first two seasons of Torchwood is all so right here.

Comments

[pineapplechild.livejournal.com]

I am having a somewhat mixed reaction to that username post. Mostly negative feelings for different reasons. The main gist of it is that, like you said, being out anywhere is a privilege. And my compromise with myself has generally been, whatever else I am, I am all of myself on the internet, awkward and too Christian to be as happily queer as I am and too queer to be as conservative (in both the narrow and broader sense of the term) as I am. (Which works most of the time.) Which, because I can't always be out with everything offline, is why I keep usernames on the internet; I know that it could be tracked back to me offline, but I do a lot to minimize that, first and foremost being, never make people think to look. The second reason I keep usernames on the internet is because I've never been super attached to my birth name. The diminutive I go by suits me quite well, and it "feels" like me-- but it's still the super polite, non-threatening version of me. (Not that my various online monikers, which at the moment are all either related to pineapples or Donne, are particularly threatening, but overall, they do tend to express something I don't always feel free to.)

The other reason I dislike Ferett's argument is that the tone of it-- not the argument, but a lot of the tone-- is coming off to me as "But I can't be arsed to keep my mental database of who's who accurate!". And first off, cry me a river, and second off-- if you can't be arsed to, why do I care that you don't know who I am?

(Oh, and the third is, I dislike immensely being told who I can be. I will be myself and all my compromises will be my own.)