life in Switzerland

You know that list of things that we're no longer allowed to do at Hogwarts? Switzerland is a little like that, just less exciting. I'd give you a list, but it would only encourage me to feel petty. Or I'd talk about how I'm eating waaaaaay too much chocolate pudding and cheese (not together).

I do want to note, however, that despite the people in the flat upstairs coming down here repeatedly to tell us that cooking and showering are not allowed after 10pm because the noise is audible in other flats, they were totally showering last night at 11:16pm. If I spoke more German, I'd totally have gone up there and knocked on their door out of amused spite.

Yesterday I had a quite nice day. When I went into the office (which is just across the street from the flat), I noticed it was warm and gorgeous out, so I decided to walk down to the old town. I did that, went on the pedestrian bridge, watched the swans for a while, marveled at what is truly gorgeous scenery and felt nearly human.

On the way back, I checked out some of the eyeglass shops. The frames here are really brilliant, and since I just got a lot of back pay for overtime, I thought maybe I'd get a new pair. My god, I thought eyeglasses were expensive in the US. I am not paying $450 francs for a pair of frames. With my prescription and lens add-ons, that would be a $1,000 pair of glasses. I have expensive tastes, but that's absurd, regardless of my budgetary abilities or no.

Anyway, then I discovered the "good" mall, which was still pretty crap, but was sort of fun and interesting. I find that much casual clothing is hard fro my eye to immediately differentiate whether it's men's or women's here, and with less size zero's in the shops, I can't just use scale to figure it out. You'd think I'd be happy about that? But gender is stricter in some ways here (although looser in others) than the US, and I worry about making faux pas that would compromise my comfort or safety. So mostly I am curious from afar and wearing my awesome men's clothes not quite how I prefer in order to deflect some of my concerns.

Aside from the mall, I also discovered a gourmet food shop! They had good quality produce. And some amazing gluten-free bread and gluten-free yaffa cakes! And it wasn't really much more expensive than everything else here, so I was happy to do that. Super nice.

Then I went back to the office to do said work. Another visiting colleague told me she's going to Einseidel today to see the Black Virgin. It's actually pretty easy to get to from here, and maybe later in the week if my schedule let's up, I'll try myself. She's actually faithful, so I didn't feel okay about going with her (and I've a lot of work to do today), but I do enjoy things like that and there's a mass every day at 8pm, so I know the cathedral is open well into the evening. Assuming the trains run as late as I think they do, I can totally make that happen.

Here, have a picture, not of Switzerland, but of me in the cinderblock flat.

( I was bad and didn't use concealer for the horrible circles under my eyes before I took this )

sundries

Grim and cloudy here today. The clouds are sealing the valley in again, which is good, as it means I'll just do my damn work. Of which there is copious amounts. I've been in bowl-like valleys before, but I've never been in one where the clouds come down in quite this way and seal the thing quite so tightly (in the time it took me to write this post, the mountains disappeared and anything more than two houses away is just a sheet of white). That's better than early last week, where the clouds were shaped like mushrooms, and it gave my Child of the 80s anxiety.

Yesterday, they were hanging the Christmas lights in the old town, so I hope they will be lit by the time Patty gets here, but I am not sure, as she will be too early for the Christmas markets.

Meanwhile, video date with Patty later!

Dogboy & Justine is up to 66 backers with a total of $3,205. That's 53% of the way towards our final goal, with just 44 days remaining. Soon Inception: The Musical will be up (the Webinatrix is webinating as we speak (I love making up verbs!) and you can witness the musical magic Erica creates. Also, Treble Entendre website (which is all construction-y right now, see: webinating)! RSN! RSN!

Yesterday I noodled around a bit by designing logos for Palatine Crescent (production company thingy with Kali -- which basically just means a way for us to have a cool name while we write the massive novel and finally write the WWII aviator chicks screenplay and noodle with a treatment for something else). It is cool. It is made of deep thoughts about gender, a random free font from the Internet, and a bad photo of a rug from a home catalog. Collage is your friend, but I need to redo it with using the full tag-line, trying it in lower-case, and seeing if I can get the text to run fluidly on a curved white banner placed over the stripes, which I'm not sure how to make happen in Pixelmator. Another day, another battle.

Blind cat in NYC needs immediate rescue from shelter after owner dies. Can you help?

The folks that run the Questioning Transphobia blog are in some tough financial straights and could use your help. I don't know them personally, but their contribution to the Internet is good stuff and no one should have to worry about where their basic food and medical needs are coming from.

Sam has just read Eric Hoffer's The True Believer for the first time. While I'm still getting over the fact that EVERYONE wasn't required to read this in sixth grade and that, that I was may explain any number of things about my personality, I'm going to take this moment to say that I think it's largely filled with obvious observations that would surprise very few of you, but it's a quick read, and you should probably catch up with that if you haven't.

The Duchess with a common touch. The hunting of the children with bloodhounds!

Robot thinks human flesh tastes like prosciutto.

But I'd love to eat here.

I am completely miserable to be missing Throne of Blood on stage.

Poems for DST. Have I mentioned I've been writing poetry again? This is what Switzerland does to me, and not in the good way. But USians, change your clocks. We're 6 hours apart again (it was five this past week).

Yearbooks are the latest self-esteem mechanisms in high schools. Is there, anywhere, a balance between anti-bullying and self-esteem, while also not bombarding people with messages that they are wildly successful just for showing up? Nothing hurt and humiliated me more in school than getting "most improved" awards. I was the worst at some things, and remained so, but because I got slightly better, they wanted to make me feel good. It was embarrassing, and antithetical to the experiences I had outside of school -- like in dance -- where I had to earn every scrap of attention, but where ever scrap of attention was like pounds of medals and remain moments I still savor. Nothing was more humiliating though than having to walk up on stage to receive Most Improved in Physical Education awards -- Look at this girl! We are showing her off! She cannot catch a ball and does not play well with others! Rumours you have heard that she is beautiful somewhere and somewhat else are just rumours! She finds dodgeball very hard!

Meanwhile, anti-bullying efforts are under attack because they are viewed as political because they "normalize" homosexuality. What I want to know is, if you believe someone is going to burn in hell, why do you think it's your job to make them suffer -- especially if they don't share your beliefs -- in this life? I understand, at least abstractly, the trying to save people from hell thing; it's the hastening people's way there business where I get confused.

I have no doubt in my mind that Ian McKellen is right about this. There is significant, explicit pressure in Hollywood, in New York, in the industry as a whole, not to come out and the image-making machine makes it easy for that explicit pressure to be frames as no different from marketing supposed alliances between heterosexual stars. But it is different. I love matters of persona, but this is one place where it's poisonous.

State-sanctioned anti-gay violence rampant in Cameroon.

The New York Times examines Facebook skeletons and politics.

US squeamishness about sex hurts our teens. No shit.

Keith Olbermann talks about his partisanship -- two days before he got suspended. One of the things I like about Olbermann is the union of anger and articulateness in his public persona and the way that relates to stories about anger in the backstage parts of his career. I poke at it, because it's interesting to me because you could say I have that sort of stuff going on with me too; at least that's how it feels from here. I really have no idea how I come off to other people, despite the endless calculation.

on matters of dry cleaning

While debating with Patty if I should get my dress shirts done here where it's expensive and I don't speak the language or wait until Cardiff; she said she was not sure if Cardiff had dry cleaning, being Cardiff (clarification: 1. Patty doesn't use dry-cleaning and so hasn't noticed any. 2. We're from New York, and yes, we can be assholes about any city that is smaller than ours, which is most. This is probably shitty, but was not meant as any particular dig at Cardiff or Wales).

And then I said, "Ianto Jones owned too many fabulous fucking suits for there not to be fucking dry cleaning in fucking Cardiff."

Which, you know, didn't seem absurd until it came out of my mouth.