rm | sundries

It is surprisingly warm here today and we have the afternoon off. At the moment, I am inside, watching children play in the community area below, having just been to the supermarket to buy Patty chocolate filled with pear liquor and some tinfoil on which to safely cook my par-baked gluten-free croissants.

I remain fascinated by the few things here which are actually the same price as in NYC (the CHF:USD is almost 1:1, but things often cost exponentially more here, so the "benefit" of the balanced currency rate is mostly moot).

At around 6am my time I will receive the first challenge in that screenwriting competition I entered. On one hand: what was I thinking? On the other, bring it on.

As usual, I have gender musings about being in Europe. When I dress as a man and am recognized as a woman, I am more likely to be told that I am dressing unprofessionally than when I am in the US, even if I am standing next to a colleague in very casual clothes. Gender appropriateness seems to trump occasion-based appropriateness. On the other hand, people who don't know me, read me as male in male attire, without, it seems reservation. If this is a courtesy or if the gender markers are different here (or both, as the gender markers ARE different here -- a man need not take up space to be a man), it is hard for me to tell.

I am, to be frank, far more comfortable in the US (or the UK or Australia) than I am here, despite what I experience as gender-courtesy. However, it makes me think of a lot of creatives that I admire who are male and don't take up required US-levels of masculine space, and I wonder how they can bear my country. It seems so terrible.

I am very comfortable with my many selves, and I enjoy gender a great deal, but I wonder, often, what it would be like not to see it through a series of griefs.

I look forward to what New Media vs. Old Media scholarship will look like when we have a generation of scholars who have experienced New Media as a given. Because being audience to experts explaining my culture to me can be a little trying, although there were some fabulous points made in the presentation that set off this thought as well: it's not "social media"; it's "political media" (anyone who has experienced friends list drama here and on Facebook or fandom wars knows this is true); we often, instinctively use this medium to jockey for power.

Over the past couple of days, I've had the pleasure of hearing Simon Hewitt Jones and Drew Balch play a number of pieces. They're fabulous musicians who are part of the Fifth Quadrant collective, and they are both also active regarding peace in the Middle East, performing and teaching on both sides of divides in the Israel/Palestine crisis. They were a great pleasure for me to watch particularly because it was so collaboration in action. Among the many things collaboration is: playful.

Meanwhile, Friends of the Text things are going on. Yay.

We have reached a very exciting Dogboy & Justine milestone: 40% -- that's 54 backers and $2,455. Which also means we're just $545 away from 50%. Meanwhile, I've already written half of next week's Theater Thursdays: it's about Peter O'Toole, Pygmalion, directing, power relationships and BDSM. Yeah, I'm really excited about it.

Meanwhile, a number of final technical matters are being dealt with on the Inception: The Musical front and it will soon be in your hot little hands.

I will, on Sunday, be bringing you, I hope, a more typical Internet presence, at least for an afternoon, as I have to go camp at the local Starbucks to do an interview via Skype about D&J and get some other stuff done.

No one here knows me as anything other than the serious, odd, awkward girl from New York who produces a lot of good material. It makes me lonely. And when people ask me if I am all right, I never know if it is a translation of a social courtesy, if my face shows sadness or complaint, or if I just have the type of features that here will always be interpreted as something being wrong.

My eyes turn down (I know this, having had it explained to me over and over that long faces and eyes like mine (and John Kerry's) are frequently perceived as "very attractive," but very attractive coupled with "sad" and "unlikeable" -- my Q rating would probably be shit), but it doesn't mean I'm sad, any more than my strong features and long face mean that I hate you.

Sometimes I think I have cultivated the grief and harshness I'm prone too simply because that is what people have always expected from me, even when I was very young, because of the shape of things.

Lady Gaga and the sociology of fame.

Time to make lunch and work on some Palatine Crescent stuff before going back to work.

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I'd love you to talk more about this idea of masculine space and taking up space. It's something I've observed, and seems to be one of the ways that Captain Jack is coded as American, but I don't know much about it.

it's not "social media"; it's "political media"

Somewhat OT: One of my pet peeves is using “politics” as a dirty word. Politics is what human beings do in groups. The only ones who don’t have to engage in politics of some sort are the hermits who forage for their own food in the wilderness. So yeah, absolutely, LJ, Facebook, etc., are political and cannot be otherwise.

(I’m not sure the business folks who see these sites in terms of “monetizing eyeballs” really understand this angle. If they did, they probably wouldn’t have bid so much for pieces of the social-networking action.)

When "politics" refers to governmental politics--which is in most casual conversation--I think it's fair to call it a dirty word. Governmental politics are a filthy, filthy business that corrupts everything it touches with "with us or against us" divisionism and vitriol. I'd rather talk about kinky sex with my elderly relatives than politics. It'd be awkward, but it wouldn't leave us hating each other.

I'm actually taking a business school class on power and politics right now, taught by a professor whose background is in psychology. It's a fascinating topic, because it's basically disassembling what people do in groups and how to recognize and use that in business situations.

Are you having luck with getting enough and a variety of victuals? It's hard enough getting what you need here, in English. I can't imagine in German and sometimes French. But you do have FABULOUS veggies over there, so that's one thing.

Chiming in, I have almost no sense at all of how I look or come across via gender. A lot of that is because I made choices to constantly suppress it, because worrying about how I was presenting was way too paralyzing, and I'd rather be oblivious than paralyzed, and then obliviousness turned into a habit. I've always lived in places where I stick out and people stare at me, so I just sort of tune it out. I'd kind of like to have the skill of knowing how people see me, but at this point in my life it's probably too late to pick it up.

When I was younger I used to dress very androgynously, and without my bangs, and because I have a strong jaw and wide shoulders I guess, I got sir-ed almost every day, until I opened my mouth and then people would get all embarrassed and apologize when they heard a very feminine voice. I never thought much about it (getting mistaken for a man didn't impact my gender identity) until I was in the Bahamas for three days and suddenly noticed that some people weren't just staring at me, they were GLARING at me, and a couple women basically threatened to kick my ass because they weren't sure if I was a boy or a girl. That scared the hell out of me... one of the few situations where I couldn't afford to not read the body language.

I also take up a lot of space for a US woman (I tend to sprawl and lurch) but not as much as, say, a Brazilian woman. It's kind of hard to separate cultural ways of taking up space from gendered ways. Maybe some of it has to do with how people lean in, or not. Or if they're putting some kind of control signals over the space they take up.

-- god, now I want croissants like nothing else.

Best bread pudding ever: Make it with croissants instead of bread.

I need to find a new bakery I like. (Or learn how to make them.)

I've always thought croissants fell into the category of "way too much work when you can buy them for a reasonable price". (And there isn't much I put in that category, as you might have noticed.) Granted, I don't know of a really good bakery that makes France-quality croissants, but heck, you can get passable ones at Au Bon Pain.

I found the fascinating, useful photo tutorial of Willow Bird Baking to be very helpful. (Also, de-mystifying the process makes it far less scary. Turns out it just takes a lot of time!)

http://willowbirdbaking.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/homemade-croissant-phototutorial/

Bonus feature - individual bread puddings made with croissants.
http://willowbirdbaking.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/individual-cranberry-pecan-croissant-bread-puddings/

i, too, have the sad eyes - it's annoying when ppl assume you are UPSET all the damn time; THAT'S JUST MY FACE!

I am, to be frank, far more comfortable in the US (or the UK or Australia) than I am here, despite what I experience as gender-courtesy.

I am curious, what have you found to be the differences (or for that matter similarities) in treatment of gender between the US, the UK, and Australia.

As a side note, my last data point on gender in Australia was a queer Australian guy I knew about a decade ago, who found the culture to be exceptionally focused on manly men being manly and was deeply uncomfortable for him.

However, it makes me think of a lot of creatives that I admire who are male and don't take up required US-levels of masculine space, and I wonder how they can bear my country. It seems so terrible.

Indeed it is. I actively avoid all-male environments and have done so all my life.

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