sundries

[rm]

Patty leaves today. I'm super busy. Talk amongst yourselves.

Yeah, I totally booked a little spa thing for us at the St. Davids last night. Hahahahahahahaah. I know.

As breast cancer treatments get more effective, mammograms may be less helpful. This and the choices that go with it is the sort of stuff that keeps me awake at night.

You should read reannon's morning random today for her coverage of the impending execution of Teresa Lewis, a woman living with a mental disability. You should know I oppose the death penalty, because even if we can agree there are some crimes people should die for, it's not a business I want my government in. This case is one example of why.

eredien wrote a really long post that expands on what I was trying to say the other day about the lack of queer representation in media and how it's a legitimate part of whether or not I respond to an entertainment property with interest. I'm still really upset about that entire situation, btw, but so it goes. Let's have some Covert Affairs fandom, right here!

I may have cadged the ticket I want to the Paley Center thing, in a standby sort of way, which makes me wonder just how early I should get on that line -- it's a fine line between effective and crazy. But I'm not even sure of this much yet.

There's this random sentence in the Pam Cook book, that while making perfect sense, sort of comes out of nowhere and immediately recedes back to same. I assume there may have been another tangent that came off of it that then went away in editing, such that the sentence just hangs there:

"... cinemas as illusion, and the construction of imaginary worlds into which one could escape without being incarcerated."

Um, is that generally a concern with imaginary worlds? Also, could an Aussie tell me if incarceration implies prison or mental-health related hospitalization more in your English? Is this the author's version of referencing Snape's Wives?

Everything is performance, maybe: Stephen Colbert will be testifying before Congress, on a serious issue, and some are claiming it will happen in character.

Has anyone seen Catfish? Do I need to care? Or is this just another installment in this year's on-the-Internet-no-one-knows-you're-a-dog there's-no-such-thing-as-the-truth movie meme?

There is way too much video porn and shoe shopping spam on LJ today. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much. LJ is also being somewhat uneven with comment delivery today.

This may be more of a challenge than I'm up for and not really my format (short is not my forte) or medium, but I'm still very tempted.

Comments

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Does it make sense to you in other contexts, not about queer/cis?


(I know I'm irked by "ZOMG, the killer is TRANS!" storylines, but that's another thing.)

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

No, alas: it's all a big emotional blind spot for me. So I can't get there by analogy. I tend to think that the whole point of fiction is to allow us to see perspectives that are not our own. I'm totally missing something here, and I don't even know what it is, or what it would be like if I could see it.

I'm irked by those "ZOMG, the killer is TRANS!" storylines too, but as you say, that's another thing. The political and societal reasons to not want to see trans people (or members of any marginalized groups) continually misrepresented as OMG Evil cartoons are clear and compelling. But for me at least, those reasons aren't related in any way to a desire or need for some kind of representation of self in entertainment products.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

The message I get from a lot of shows is, "you do not exist" - Chicago ERs full of white doctors, hello? Where are all the South and East Asians? Stories set in the future where there's only white people? It's like being a ghost. And a constant reminder that I get a lot of practice at seeing myself in white characters, but white people don't get a lot of practice at identifying with non-white characters.

Maybe the shortest version is that I don't need extra practice with perspectives that are not my own. That's pretty much the definition of not being in the majority. I need practice seeing my own as normal - the bits of "my own" that are not personal. I know that the particular grouping of quirks that make up "me" are possibly unique, and I'd be shocked to see it presented as a whole. But when the most visible element of who I am is erased, I feel erased, too.