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[rm]

I've succumbed and signed up for Netflix, and my rental list reads like the list of everyone else's obsessions I've never gotten around to (which is to say: Black Hawk Down, Amelie, Lost in Translation, and television series from England (read: Horatio Hornblower) ... oh hey... maybe they have MI-5.... oooo, they do, only season 1 though).

So, sorry if I was a bit overly literary about the craptastic nature of my day. I still don't know what the story is about the Counsellor thing, and I'd like to, just so I can assimilate, do anything that might make sense, and move on.

That said, I am really stuck on the way I put this, this notion that people presume all these things about what I think of them, because I put my hands on my hips, because that's where they fit... it's so interesting really. I spent the rest of the day trying not to do it, almost fearfully... very strange, and maybe there's something interesting to write in all that.

Other small accomplishment of the day... cleaned off my desktop... now if I can just purge all the crap in my bookmarks....

Really bummed I have to wait until Sunday to ride again, although this is probably good -- today I couldn't cross my legs without manually moving them into place. I have _really_ _really_ tight tendons by nature (an issue of much medical consternation when I danced), and I'd forgotten how they react to my stretching them out at all. Yuck.

Can I just tell you how much I hate being hassled about being Jewish (which I am, but it's like one thing on a long list)? Aside from iew racist bullshit, creepy.... this whole "looking Jewish" thing is shit. Hello, idiots, there are Jews in Ethiopia. There are Jews in this world with blonde hair. Okay? Fuck off.. People look like they are from certain parts of the world, that happen to contain Jews. Also... my nose? Roman nose. Stereotypical roman nose. If you're gonna be a racist, at least like be an observant one, okay? Man... there's no precision in anything anymore.

BTW, ordered more BPAL the other night.. got their Mabon limited edition, and a full sized Hesperides.

Comments

[lllvis.livejournal.com]

Amelie was pretty good, I'm interested to hear what you think of it once you've seen it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've honestly no interest in it, but everyone I know keeps going "her father is mean and she has a heart condition, you have to see it!" So it's like one of those things to get done with.

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

As I sort of alluded to the other day in a comment, a lot of people have whacked perceptions of anything that's not "cornbread" Anglo-Saxon Americana (as much as the latter two aren't very...definitive...or even the same thing really).

My roommate has a song he occasionally sings. He's of Italian lineage, but he likes to sing the following song on occasion:

"Kill all the white people.
Put them in a pot.
Kill all the white people.
Bake them 'til their hot."

White people, in this case, being really stupid cornbread-Anglo-Saxon-Americana - or, conservative old white men.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Lol... yeah. I've had lots of "Jews look like other white people?" remarks when travelling in the middle of the country. I also get a lot of stuff about the nature of being Sicilian due to both mafia movies and the opening of True Romance.

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

Personally, from what I've seen through your user icons here on LJ, I'd describe you as having very "classical" features. In saying that, however, I also recognize that a lot of folks don't know what's meant usually by the term "classical" most of the time, and it's also very...vague in terms of description. I think the term captures something of the "nature" (can you tell I like to qualify a lot of my words with the overuse of quotation marks?) of those features.

Or maybe I'm just thinking along more artistic/aesthetic lines in terms of description. "The artist painted her in a baroque style" as opposed to "The woman in the painting has strong Germanic features." Although Germanic is probably a bad term to use in this drawn out analogy.

So, yeah. What you said.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm laughing because I totally get it. And yes, I do... in another time, or in France, I'd be a hottie.

There are far worse fates.

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

*snrk* Okay, but you do realize that the typical response at this point is to comment that "But you are a 'hottie'", right?

However, yeah...insert the fairly stereotypical diatribe about overly buxom but otherwise skin on bones ultra-tan blonde women being all "teh hawt" here. At least here in the States in a lot of places.

[rm.livejournal.com]

One of the more bizarre things about having to manage my own acting career right now, is learning to translate what casting people actually mean when they say, hot, beautiful, sexy, average, attractive but flawed... etc. Because what they mean, is always so weirdly specific....

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

Basically, trying to figure out the precise associations they have for these descriptors, especially since for most people the terms are very personalized in terms of meaning (i.e., one person's "sexy" is another's "ehh..."). I can certainly see how casting people have developed a specific jargonic usage based on expectations within the industry.

I have my own ideas how I would try to interpret them, but they'd be very experiential interpretations: defining the term in regards to the effect that trait has on the beholder. However, that's still a fluid proposition, depending a lot on the emotional depth of the viewer, as well as their ability to be "moved."

For instance, I met a woman in a class last summer that literally caused me to gasp when I saw her the first couple of times, while the only term that came to mind to describe her was "beautiful." (Of course, I freely admit to having a raving Romantic in the back of my head, and I have a very philosophical meaning for the term "beauty.")

"Hot" and "sexy," meanwhile, produce a much more "visceral" reaction based on (obviously) physical lust. While "beautiful" inspires a desire to contemplate and appreciate the source of beauty (in my mind, at least), "sexy" inspires much more a feeling of physical desire.

Yeah, pretty damn obvious conclusions, I know. And entirely relative in how you apply them. So, you have my sympathies in trying to figure out what the hell they mean.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

I agree with your assessment of the words - the problem I find is trying to use those terms in the way intended , and having anyone believe you.

[orien.livejournal.com]

I still think I am one of the only white people in NYC. English and German, baby, with enough of a side of Cherokee to at least make me slightly yellow (no, it's not jaundice, dammit, it's genetics).

Sadly, I'm not stupid but my family is. My girlfriend being typically miscellaneous and brown has gone over so well among my supremicist, southern elders.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends where you go in NYC.... where I am it's more white than not, but very mixed... where my parents are -- entirely entirely white.

[orien.livejournal.com]

Leave me to my delusions!!!!!!!!!111111111

[rm.livejournal.com]

So I'm impressed by your functionality already... do you have a timetable for getting the leg fixed up or do you not even want to think about that yet?

[orien.livejournal.com]

As far as anyone can tell medically, there is nothing wrong with my leg--so likely a torn muscle. I am slowly but surely walking better. Very slowly. I still needed a chair to get out of the hospital, but I took her two flights of stairs without shrieking. Not that I can shriek, at the moment. I was intubated and my voice doesn't much function above a hoarse rattle.

The amount of pain and time lost from work makes me fear chest surgery, but at least that is all skin and fat, whereas this is metal and bone.

It will be at least a month for the bone to heal and another month to full functionality.

[rm.livejournal.com]

My mother broke her collar bone over thirty years ago, and it never healed right and always gave her problems, so I definitely think you did the right thing.

And I'm so glad you won't need surgery for the leg, that sounded really awful. I suppose as it gets stronger what's bad about NYC now will be good for you later -- you can hardly avoid waling here, and you will get that strength back just by how we live.

[orien.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm looking forward to it. I enjoy walking and we'd meant to spend last week showing me around town. I've been getting rides to the hospitals from her mother and taking cabs home. I'll be glad when I can do yoga again.

Loved my doctor; if you need ortho work, I'd recommend him. DiFelice at Jacobi.
Overall, I've been very pleased with the health care people here.

[justpat.livejournal.com]

Every so often I get told I look Jewish. More often than that, I tell people that they think I look Jewish. It usually goes:

"You're Italian? Really? I thought...."
"You thought I looked Jewish, right? You can say it."
"Well, yeah, I did."
"Fuck you, freak."

On occasion I ask them what "Jewish" looks like. So far, no one has checked me for horns.

[orien.livejournal.com]

I've a friend, born and raised in Georgia to horrifyingly white suburban parents. His brother and mother are blonde. Somehow, this boy came out with not only the Jew 'fro, but from some depth of his gene pool, he dredged up the nose.

He is very tired of being asked about his ethnicity.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Dude....

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

Oh your nose is *so* Romanesque!

And tuck you into *my* image of Austen-ville and you're the cat's meow.

I can take my salve in that I have the good, wide ox-bearing hips and sturdy figure of a German immigrant or medieval peasant.
(Sigh.)

(I'd rather be Eleanor of Aquitaine. At least she had real estate.)

Ekatarina

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

People are always surprised to find out that I'm Jewish, but I have no idea why. Usually, they can't come up with an alternative ethnicity to assign me, either. To me, I look Jewish.

Your writing about BPAL inspired me to go check out the site, which of course led to me ordering a six pack of samples. I'm trying out Black Forest, Bewitched, Intrigue, March Hare, Kumiho and Jolly Roger. If I'm pleased with them, I've got another order of six ready to go. It's been years since I wore perfume, but these scents make me want to renew the habit.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Ha! Last night, for some reason, you came up, and my comment was, "Rache should be wearing the feminine equivalent of a toga, and sitting in the royal seats in a coliseum, deciding life or death." I got it right!

[ladypeculiar.livejournal.com]

Oh man . . too many jokes . .. too . . many. . .JOKES!!!

I'll be good. And not say anything about RM presiding over the fate of buffed up slaveboys in short tunics . ..

[rm.livejournal.com]

You know, I think my new strategy is to be so absurd, people just don't know where to start with the mocking.

So far, it seems to be working.