sundries

[rm]

My jet lag always gets worse before it gets better. Oh god.

Am I a bad person because when I see a headline that reads "Romney takes swing at Palin" it takes me a minute to realize that there wasn't actual brawling in the streets?

Isaac Mizrahi has five rules for a good dinner party. Since I suspect most of us have never hired a waiter, what are yours?

Has anyone else been following Disunion on The New York Times? It's a blog on the Civil War period, and it's pretty interesting. I thought their piece on Lincoln and Joshua Speed was particularly good for not introducing anachronistic labellings of sexuality and acknowledging the different physical and emotional lines of the period, while also not doing the "of course the president wasn't gay!" thing either.

Argh, one day I will get to see this production. Why is it that the only opera that does this televised at the movie theater thing is opera I have access to right here? Argh argh argh.

So Sherlock... Thank god I found Torchwood (among other things) between this and Harry Potter, or else I know who I'd be identifying with.

I'm not, thankfully, like Sherlock at all. I'm not that smart (and I'm pretty fucking smart). My propensity for pattern recognition, while extreme, makes me creative, paranoid and really clever, but not so much with the accurate. I don't have (nor want) the type of focus Sherlock demonstrates. I'm not that mean. Or petty. And connecting to other people is a reflex for me, even if sometimes I wish it wasn't.

But....

But, but, but, but....

The way my brain works does make it sometimes more than a tiny bit hard for me to live in the world the way I'm supposed to. I blurt out weird things at weird times, their relevance clear only to me. I get frustrated with others. I can be petulant and childlike. I can demand that people play not just at my speed but in my way. I can be pretty fucking hard to be around, and the diplomacy I do have is a cultivated skill because of just how awful I think I can be.

And I adore Sherlock because even if I am not remotely that guy, it gives us someone who struggles in the world because of the ways in which they are exceptional. Someone who doesn't apologize for it. Someone who is weirdly vulnerable, but isn't interested in that vulnerability, because of it. Someone who is funny-looking, magnetic, joyful, inappropriate, and challenging enough that other people like to try to shove him in boxes that aren't quite right. He is ambiguous and contradictory, with a face that both seems not fully formed and too sharp.

I watch Sherlock and I honestly feel better about the ways I'm not so good at people, the ways people misread me, the brutalities I inflict on myself, and the fact that no matter how smart I am, I'm not nearly as smart as I want to be and that's probably a good thing.

I'm not Sherlock, and Sherlock's not me, but I feel a little realer for this portrayal of him. Most others have been so much colder and so much more assured (this one is certain, but not so assured), so even if people tell me (not infrequently) that I should cosplay one of the older portrayals (because I'm thin and sharp and, I suppose, unsettling), it's this one that I feel like I actually get.

And the coat is amazing. Maybe I have a thing (Snape, Jack, Sherlock... there's a pattern, ne?)

Comments

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

If your guests can't find the humor in your setting fire to the turkey

This actually happened to me last Thanksgiving.

Typically, I will brine the turkey on Tuesday, smoke it on Wednesday, then put it in an electric roaster, set low, to finish overnight. (Because of some family and friends' work schedules, we often have Thanksgiving dinner early in the day.)

Last Thanksgiving, at around 5AM, my smoke detectors started shrieking. The entire main floor of the house was filled with smoke and my turkey was merrily burning. The temperature control on the roaster had shorted in the night, jacking the temperature up to something unreasonable.

My husband FREAKED OUT. Me, I put out the turkey, dragged the whole mess into the back yard, opened all the windows, woke Elder Monster and put him to air out the house, yanked on my boots and cloak, and went off to buy another turkey. I found a fresh one of reasonable size, took it home, smoked it for half the usual time, and finished it off in the oven at a higher temperature, just in time for my guests to arrive.

It gave us a HYSTERICAL story to tell at dinner, and no one minded that the turkey hadn't been brined and was not smoked for as long as usual. This year, a guest brought a toy fire extinguisher as a gag, and the entire assembly laughed their asses off. I will never live down the burning turkey (and I'm glad of that, because it was FUNNY!)

number 5

[newwaytowrite.livejournal.com]

agreed.

After all the gift is for the host. As a thank you. To be enjoyed later. Much later even. Unless it is flowers..then find a vase and display them...or better yet...the guest could bring the flowers in a vase.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. Actually, the most I've ever set fire to was the appetizers. We've had turkeys come out half raw, though, and a whole series of dessert related disasters. (I tend to be a pretty ambitious baker, and sometimes those experiments just do not pan out.)