(This journal is queer. And friendly.)

Spread the Net: Donate ten dollars. Buy one mosquito net. Save three people from malaria.
Got a couple of hours? Volunteer in the developing world from your own computer desk.
Got 25 dollars to spare? Donating money once is good. Lending it over and over is better. Microcredit from microlenders. Like you.

March 15, 2008.



May 15, 2008.

The lilacs are blooming, too. I took torrain a bunch today. Usually I can't arrange flowers worth a damn, but I liked how these went together well enough to take a picture.

(via pecunium)



Also:



Yes, yes, bad pacifist. It's the glittering tinsel of neo-Feudalism, gets me every time.

First, from yesterday, a pic for editrx, who I called in a panic yesterday to explain that everywhere in Downtown Ottawa that used to do FedEx seems to have suddenly stopped.


Apparently if you catch them when they're clearing the drop boxes you can just go sit expectantly in their truck until they come back ...

Today:

StupidCat: *eats shoots from climbing plants being started in kitchen window*

Marna: *takes them away and plants them outside*

StupidCat: *is sad*

Marna: *is unsympathetic*

StupidCat: *eats kitchen herbs*

Marna: *takes them away and puts them on the porch*

StupidCat: *is disconsolate*

Marna: *is grouchy*

StupidCat: *discovers asparagus left out for supper*



Marna: *is displeased*

StupidCat:


*is ABUSED*

Marna: *plants pot of mint and cilantro and dill for StupidCat*

But at this time of year, it is sometimes the case that one has enough of it about to wish to move beyond the basic Steamed-with-Butter-Salt-and-Pepper approach.

Therefore, three easy things:

1) Grill it on your bbq, over hickory chips. (Fiddleheads are also good this way)

2) Saute several chopped cloves of garlic and a chopped onion in olive oil. When they are somewhere between transparent and golden brown, toss in asparagus spears, broken in half, turn the heat up to medium-high, and add a healthy squirt of lime or lemon juice and (optional) a lot of pepper. (Also fiddlehead suitable)

3) Blanch it[2], and then cover it with your favourite balsamic vinegar and leave it in the fridge for the afternoon, then eat it as it is or put it in a salad. (Haven't tried this one with fiddleheads)

In either case, when it turns dark green, it's done.

All of these things are good with Salsa Salmon, which is salmon fillets or steaks baked very fast[3] with a coating of salsa.

[1] Assuming you like asparagus at all, that is. If you don't, may I have yours?

[2] Blanch is one of those cookbook words designed to make you feel dumb. If you're told to blanch something, toss it into the minimum necessary boiling water, count to fifteen, drain it, cover it with cold water or, if you have some handy, ice (to stop the cooking process), count to fifteen again, and then drain that off. The saved water is not very good for stock, as if you've done this fast enough there's very little flavour or nutrient loss. You do this for vegetables that aren't very digestible eaten completely raw, or not terribly tasty that way, either: asparagus, green beans ...

[3] 475F/250C, 5 minutes per inch/2.5cm – if your fish is stuffed, calculate on the final thickness. This produces INCREDIBLY good fish, moist and perfect, although if you do it with a whole fish with fins and tail they will smolder alarmingly and you'll have to reset the smoke detector. This doesn't affect the actual fish, though.

and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest, for there is
nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry,
stealing, fighting..."

monkeypuzzle notes that:

"I was looking around at where I could donate, and it seems like Doctors Without Borders is one of the few organizations actually in Myanmar. They have had HIV/AIDS clinics in Yangon for a while now, so hopefully there isn't quite the resistance to them as the government is having to other countries and organizations. They are currently trying to gain access to other, more affected areas, but who knows what they'll be allowed to do."

We're on monthly giving, which I recommend, for two reasons:

First, it's good for MSF. They appreciate -- my God, how they appreciate! -- emergency funding when something like this happens, but scheduled donations give them the predictable, steady base of funding that allows them to do things like run those HIV clinics and stay ready for things like this.

Secondly, it's good for you as a donor: ever notice how major disasters always seem to hit when you're kind of broke yourself? I know people dig deep and find the money somehow, but consider: $300.00 when a disaster hits is a serious hole in the budget. $25/month is a relatively small hole in most budgets, and you can plan around it, but at the end of the day you've given the same amount.

And, as always, it's better to give into the general fund, or into Disaster Relief as a whole, than to specify a current disaster.

Barring that situation, please consider selecting "Greatest Need" or "Disaster Relief". It saves time and money -- that as to come from somewhere -- going to processing and administration, and makes absolutely no difference to how much money overall will actually go to Myanmar, i.e. as much as is needed to the absolute limit of MSF's abilities to procure it.

A long, long time ago, like a year or something like that, I promised audrawilliams that I would write a post about feminism and agreeableness, because this is a concept which as a feminist she finds occasionally problematic[1] and then I never got to it, because nothing I wanted to say about it would come out right.

And then there was a discussion on james_nicoll's lj about crowds and moving through them, and getting walked into and pushed and about how as a woman I have had to unlearn a lot of behaviour around getting out of the way of men, because, frankly, men are often inclined to subconsciously expect that non-men things will move for them[2], and someone asked me how to do that without being a jerk -- without being, basically, disagreeable -- and I didn't really have a good sort of step-by-step answer, but I did what I could (I said, what you do is you become conscious of your space and what's in it and how you manage it, and then you can decide how you want to manage it) and then forgot about it for awhile.

But I was standing at the bus stop on Rideau Street today, holding some parcels and waiting for the bus and sort of negotiating my spot in the crowd, as you do, and thinking idly about "what does agreeableness have to do with feminism?" and less idly about "how do you keep your space in a crowd without being a jerk?" and realised that these are basically aspects of the same question.

So, here is how the sidewalk thing works.

First, you notice that people seem to push you out of the way a lot, or walk into you, or, in extreme cases, put their hands on you and move you out of the way. (A young man did this to me in the food court today. Unfortunately for the beauty of the teachable moment, I have both a high startle reflex and a real and deep dislike of being grasped by the upper arms, especially from behind, so in fact I let out a piercing scream and he backed up very rapidly. This may discourage him from doing it to someone else in the near future, but it's hardly elegant. C'est la vie.)

Next, you notice that you have certain conditioned reflexes, yourself, which allow this behaviour to pass unchallenged: a trick of stepping aside whenever someone is headed straight at you. A few well-practiced evasive manoeuvrers. A certain tendency to avoid eye contact or other actions that may draw you to the attention of gentlemen who are about to saunter into your personal space. The ability to fold your neither short nor skinny self into one-half of a seat on public transit to accommodate the skinny guy beside you whose knees are a solid three feet apart. A complete and utter unfamiliarity with the actual feel of an airplane armrest against your elbow.

So you stop. You just stop. You make eye contact. You figure out where you're going on the sidewalk and you just go there. You sit down in the middle of the bus seat. You start saying, possibly in a small and overly ladylike way at first, things like "excuse me, but you're crowding me." You get to know your own space. You get to own it. You start to use it. It feels good.

But when you become aware of your space and how you're using it, you will begin to notice something else: there are people getting out of YOUR way. There are people whose space YOU are not respecting. People who your programmed reflexes automatically interpret as less entitled than you are, just as other people's programmed reflexes do to you. People whose needs, considered objectively, are often considerably greater than yours, because they are very small, or very old, or somewhat physically or mentally fragile, or greatly burdened, or somewhat lost, or simply because their space has been systematically disrespected by a large number of people for a very long time, for one reason or another, and their dignity has been somewhat tattered by this experience, and having their psychic space invaded bruises them the way that having yours invaded bruised you.

And that's when you really start making conscious choices about your space, and about how you're going to manage it. That's when "your space" actually becomes yours; when you fire all of your spinal reflexes from their management position and start running it yourself, because you've learned to respect it enough to respect other people's legitimate claims on it, and to consciously practice good management of the conflicts therein.

Somewhere in there, you may even find that you have acquired a bit of relaxed goodwill about the whole process. Someone looks you straight in the eye and heads straight for your left elbow, and you find yourself thinking that you could just leave said appendage there, maybe even angle it a bit more towards his ribcage and "teach him a lesson", and then you remember that you're not terribly well qualified to teach that particular lesson, yourself, and you cut him a bit of slack and shift a little, because, sure, he's being a bit of a jerk, but you're a jerk sometimes yourself.

You don't jerk back into your old habits and cringe out of the way. You don't drop your eyes, or step off the curb. But you let the man by. And sometimes, when you do that, he shifts over a bit, too, just enough that you don't actually collide. Sometimes you even get a little flicker of acknowledgement: "Err. Oops. Sorry. Thanks." Sometimes it doesn't work that way, of course. But sometimes it does.

There's a temptation, of course, to want to hurry it up, to go straight to the final stage – the nice satisfying one where you're all mellow and rational, and, yes, agreeable, because you have Risen Above your crap – but that trick never works. Garbage doesn't go away because you decide it's ugly and shove it under something and ignore it. It just sits there, getting stinkier and stinkier while you spend yourself broke on air-freshener, until one day there's a nasty brown oozing stream coming from somewhere, and you can't even necessarily remember where, but you have to deal with it if you're going to keep living in that house. In the meantime, it's gotten a lot ickier.

You can't do a good job of managing what you haven't yet decided to take charge of. You cannot honestly share or sacrifice any part of what you haven't yet learned to regard as yours to control and dispense.

Contrariwise, there's the temptation, once you're not only in touch with your anger but actually curled up around it, all warm and cozy, to just stay there and bask. I mean, hey. You're entitled. Every single one of us who's made it to adulthood alive is probably, if their case were considered fairly, entitled to be right royally pissed off every day for the rest of their life about their pile of garbage, and there's always someone you can dump that garbage on, someone who can't do anything about it, someone who (you tell yourself) may not even really notice your contribution to all the garbage that's been dumped on their lawn.

Unfortunately, that trick never works either: if someone's been dumping psychic trash on your lawn, moving it to your neighbour's lawn – along with a bit of your own garbage – doesn't actually diminish your problems; you think it does, for a bit, but basically it doubles them. Because now you have an upset neighbour looking to move some garbage, and the neighbourhood is still covered in garbage. (See zingerella's excellent This Crap Is Not My Crap)

Recycling and composting – my metaphors do tend to get away with me – takes longer than just flinging it back and forth, and it involves a certain amount of heavy lifting, but when you're done there's actually going to be less garbage.

So that is what feminism, reclaiming (and then redistributing) the sidewalks, and agreeableness have to do with each other, and I hope audrawilliams considers it worth the wait.

[1] Actually we were talking about an entry she'd written about Al-Anon and how one of the leaflets she had picked up there said this:

6. JUST FOR TODAY I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress becomingly, keep my voice low, be courteous, criticize not one bit. I won't find fault with anything, nor try to improve or regulate anybody but myself. and when I say she found it problematic what I mean is that her instinctive and very healthy reaction was "Fuck That Shit" and when I read that just the way it is my basic reaction is Fuck That Shit as well, but nevertheless.

[2] If you wish to argue at this point that I am being terribly sexist, let me save you some time: you may yet prove to have a point. Nevertheless, it is a thing I have noticed, and continue to notice, so you're fairly unlikely to change my mind, or even get me to argue with you, at this time. If you don't do this, you don't do this. Carry on. "Quite a number of men", if you prefer to substitute that phrase, do. Further, I shall not go.

I now own these shoes.



*feels all cute*

They're actually INSANELY comfy, too.

I shall wear them with the gorgeous green-chintz-with-pink-flowers frock torrain made me.

Because I AM JUST THAT GIRLY.

archy she says to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life

(Don Marquis, mehitabel and her kittens)

The last round of Animal and Object is fairly recent, so I think it's time for a round of the Quotations Game.

Rules:

1) The first word of your quotation must start with the first letter of the last word of the last quotation.

Example:

"Like them, I left a settled life; I threw it all away" (Stan Rogers, Northwest Passage)
"As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go" (John Donne, A Valediction Forbidding Mourning)
"Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" (Shakespeare, Hamlet)

2) The result should make for a rough, if surreal, sort of narrative – on at least the fairly low level of the example texts. Otherwise the game isn't much fun. Extra bragging rights are awarded for extreme aptness, funniness, pun creation, double entendre creation, clever refutations, etc. Don't get too hung up on interpreting this rule. Have fun. Try to make your quote fun for whoever gets it. Don't just plug in a quote with no other claim to being there than it beginning with the right letter, basically.

3) All quotes must have attribution. Being reminded of stuff you haven't read in ages is half the fun!

4) Quotations may be from songs, poems, plays, fiction, or reasonably non-specialist prose (i.e. Charles Lamb is in; Malinowski is okay, Problems In Physics, 5th Ed., is right out. Aim for a level where even people who don't recognise the work will vaguely recognise the source)

4) The same source (author, not work) may not be repeated within 5 quotes.

5) Googling to check accuracy is not only allowed but encouraged.

6) Please do not thread comments; it leads to an inability to easily tell which quotation is presently the last.

Have fun! Here is your beginning quotation:

"It lies not in our power to love, or hate/For will in us is over-rul'd by fate." (Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander)

I love a woman with A Theory:

... I believe that part of Livejournal's appeal to women rises from its social-networking structure; not the linkages, but the autonomy. Each person's livejournal constitutes an inviolable territory, which can only be transgressed at our sufferance. Within the boundaries of our livejournals, consent is not a social-covenant, or an agreement, but an absolute law, no more to be ignored than gravity. There is never any need to explain to someone that 'no means no', because ban_set does not 'mean' no; it is no, with absolute force.

I am going to argue further: Livejournal has become an outlet for women's sexuality precisely because of this ...

personwhoshallremainanonymous:

I need to bounce the box
I have an oddity in the monitor and I'm hoping I can make it go away

commodorified

somehow that sounded filthy

personwhoshallremainanonymous:

Sorry, hanging out with too many microsofties, one learns weird lingo

commodorified

no, i approve of filthy

commodorified

it sounds like a rather jolly euphemism for wanking

Dear Persons Who Become Very Upset and Defensive When It Is Suggested That You, Yes You, Are Behaving In A Sexist[1] Manner:

Being sexist is not a function of being Evil.

It is a function of being MISINFORMED.

If sexism were a problem of Evil People behaving Evilly, there wouldn't be NEARLY as much of it about.

The evil starts getting in when you are informed that your information is incorrect, realise that it will be very much to your advantage to continue acting on the bad information and that you have the power to do so, and willfully or unreflectively choose to continue to maintain the truth of the bad information and to behave as if it were true.

Therefore, the Feminist Conspiracy[2] wishes to suggest that if you either dislike the idea of being sexist, or simply find having to endure people calling you out for your sexism incredibly unpleasant, the auto-denial reflex[3] is not your friend.

This has been a Public Service Announcement by the Feminist Conspiracy.

[1] Substitute homophobia, racism, religious bigotry, etc, as needed. Sadly, this will often be needed. Global find and replace is recommended.

[2] Me. Every feminist gets to be her own Feminist Conspiracy.

[3] Also known as the Not Me I'm A Nice Guy [Person] I Didn't Mean It That Way, I am Totally Unlike The Last 500 Guys [Persons] Who Did That You Are Just Making Assumptions Defence. Not to be confused with I Don't Do That, Or Don't Do That Anymore, Therefore This Is Not To My Address, Therefore I Need Not Take It To Heart, which very often is your friend.

Waste Land Limericks – Wendy Cope

I.
In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyants distress me,
Commuters depress me--
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

II.
She sat on a mighty fine chair,
Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;
She asks many questions,
I make few suggestions--
Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair!

III.
The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;
Tiresias fancies a peep--
A typist is laid,
A record is played--
Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

IV.
A Phoenician called Phlebas forgot
About birds and his business--the lot.
Which is no surprise,
Since he met his demise
And was left in the ocean to rot.

V.
No water. Dry rocks and dry throats.
Then thunder, a shower of quotes!
From The Sanskrit to Dante.
Da. Damyata. Shantih.
I hope you'll make sense of the notes.

The Harry Potter Waste Land

LOLcat Wasteland

A particularly nice, slow, haunting version of Teenage Wasteland Baba O'Reily, are you happy now, angevin2? by The Who

A Waste Land, Bryan Ferry

The actual Waste Land, by TS Eliot. (Hypertext version, very useful)

TS Eliot reading The Waste Land, Part One. Part Two. (Part Three appears to be missing, alas.)

Stayed up late enough last night, having fallen into conversation with angevin2, damned_colonial, and pecunium, none of whom I've talked to enough lately, to see the dawn. it was a nice dawn. I made a face at it.

Woke up at 11:30 to the sounds of iclysdale hunting for his missing keys. (He found them)

The weather was glorious. The weather report for the next week is cool and rainy. So we declared this a Lost Weekend, and all the housework that we blew off yesterday to garden got blown off again, this time in favour of a 15km hike out at Stony Swamp followed by all-you-can-eat sushi.

And I have things to say about the walk and the things we saw, and ought to say them, except that if I stay in front of this computer any longer I will probably wake up tomorrow morning with a keyboard print on my forehead.

I may as well expand the comment I just left on james_nicoll's post about The Ferret's various gender-based unpleasantries throughout the years, in this case:

Unfortunately, I can't decry the process of "asking repeatedly," mainly because it's the only stimuli a lot of women respond to. Frankly, I think any woman who has to be begged fifteen times before she eventually accepts should be drug into the back alleyways and beaten, because her rampant need for a string of pleadings trains the wrong sort of men that no doesn't mean no. And then we should go beat up the men for good measure.

Which lots of people have done quite a good job dissecting the fuckwittedness of.

But what I'm slightly surprised nobody's picked up on (or else I just haven't seen it) is how much his framing of the problem reinforces what he's supposedly trying to address. (I mean, aside from the exaggeration of "fifteen" and the loadedness of "begging" in this context. I mean, I know people whose foreplay involves male begging, and their kink is okay, but it is also well outside the scope of this discussion.)

Basically, it's still giving men permission to be, and stay, clueless.

There is a WORLD of difference between "please try your call again later", or even "You know, I didn't think a lot of you when you first asked, but if you're going to keep being so bloody CHARMING ..." and reiterations of "look, seriously your application has been considered and you have not been short-listed, get the Hell out of my airspace" interspersed with the blatant emotional blackmail and covert menace that are the stock-in-trade of the proto-rapist.

At least as much difference as there is between the quite nice young man who called out of his car to me on my way home tonight to ask if he was going the right way for the Queensway (no) and The Usual Yobs.

If a man can't learn to tell the difference, he can damn well learn to ASK.
If he learns neither, he doesn't want to know. He's comfortable retaining the option of pleading ignorance. At which point the smart money concludes that he's expecting to NEED to plead ignorance at some point, and stays the Hell away from him.

Also and while I'm up, ranting about the desirability of groups of men "beating the Hell" out of rapists? Is actually incredibly counter-productive. Unless what you WANT is to a) ensure that no woman is ever going to bring up any sexual assault anywhere around you unless she is quite sure that she's totally okay with vigilante action in which she has neither agency nor voice ensuing, and with all possible (unforseeable) consequences therof, and b) devalue the experience and claim on justice of every woman who doesn't happen to have some guy willing to exact revenge "for her".

You want to be productive? Make her a damn cup of tea and hold her hand while she decides what SHE wants to do about the situation. She's not your property. You have not been robbed. It is not your masculine perogative to avenge her honour. Try respecting her agency instead: after what she's just been through she's apt to find it a welcome change.

Happiness

John had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Hat;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Mackintosh --
And that
(Said John)
Is
That.

-- A. A. Milne

Today iclysdale and I went to the garden centre, and discovered that his new bike trailer is happy to carry 45kg of garden soil but balks at 90. So I guarded things while he went home and came back, in the oppressive right-before-a-thunderstorm heat.

Then we came home and planted Many Things in the rain. After which I needed a shower and a change of clothes and a session with the nailbrush very badly. And also my supper.

I'd told fajrdrako I'd be over when the rain stopped, but I said to myself, "Self, you have wellies. And a waterproof jacket. And a bukit[1].

So I walked to the Glebe in the rain, cutting through the park and hitting as many of the mud puddles as was practicable on the way.

And this I recommend.

[1] But not a waterproof skirt. I spent some time pondering how to correct this void in the outdoor wear market, as I walked.

The ever-fabulous synedochic on how not to be That Guy

What she said. All of it, including the links. Men Who Explain Things particularly recommended.

Found on the Guardian Website.



Bob Edme/AP

Because I like them a lot, and was idly making a playlist of them in my head, earlier.

And here it is (Yousendit, 18M)


Letter From Bilbao - The Lowest Of The Low

I am writing you this letter in desperation I'm afraid
And I won't be back to Lindsay for the veterans' parade
'Cause I got banged up pretty good in a street-fight in Bilbao
And I won't be coming home to see your young and pretty face

I am far too young to feel so old
And far too tired to care
That I took down twenty bastards before they left me lying here...

Anchorage - Michelle Shocked

She said, Hey girl it's about time you wrote
It's been over two years, my old friend
Takes me back to the days of the foreign telegrams
And the all night rock and rolling
Hey Chel we was wild then...

20th Of April - Oysterband

20th of April, 1990
Thought I'd write and say hello
Are you surprised to get this letter?
It all seems so long ago...

Dear Mr. President - Pink

Dear Mr. President,
Come take a walk with me.
Let's pretend we're just two people and
You're not better than me.
I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly...

William Westwood Letter - The Band That Never Was

Reverend Sir,

I have to inform you that long before this letter reaches your hand, the hand that wrote this will be cold and dead...

Hmm. I thought I had more. Anyone who cares to is free to help correct this situation in comments :)

1) Sunday, 10:00-11:15 Martha Jones: Made of Awesome or Disappointing Stereotype?

"The third series of the new Doctor Who heralded the addition of Martha Jones as the main companion. Fans of color cheered the news and many loved her first the first episode. But as the series went on, some fans found a lot wanting in Martha's character and put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the writers and producers. Now that Martha's Series Three character arc is complete and her guest episodes on Torchwood are also complete, we can examine her role in the Whoniverse. "

M: Michael D. Thomas
Joanna Lowenstein
Chris Hill
Marna Nightingale
Ariel Franklin-Hudson

2) Saturday, 4:00-5:15 Fighting the Good Fight with Limited Resources

"It's incredibly easy to feel overwhelmed when there are so many problems in the world that have to be addressed, and as we get older, we often lose the confidence that there will be enough time to effect change. Add physical and financial limitations, and the process gets even more daunting. How can we target our efforts without draining ourselves? Let's discuss strategies. "

M: Cynthia Gonsalves
Joyce Scrivner
Nabil Arnaoot
Marna Nightingale

Anyone got any comments on either topic they want to toss out or resources or discussions they want to point me at? Obviously I have strong opinions about both topics or I wouldn't have signed up, but I'd like to be as well-informed as possible.

I have had A Serious Break. And it was Good.

It's been... a hard winter. And a month ago, I about snapped. Flailed. Wibbled around insisting that I Had To Do Something. Considered and rejected a number of fairly outre plans. Found myself googling convents. ANGLICAN convents.

And I mentioned this, rather diffidently, to damned_colonial and she basically said DOOO EEET and hooked me up with a friend who'd gone on a retreat a few years back who reassured me and encouraged me and answered a bunch of questions.

So I asked a few more people and they said DOOO EET. So I did it. Rather nervously, but considerably spurred on by the fact that a week before I was due to leave for the convent I spent the night in ER ascertaining that despite having scared the living heck out of angevin2, fairestcat and iclysdale, no, I had NOT had a heart attack. If you're stuck in a bunch of unhealthy patterns in your life and can't get motivated to address them, can I just commend to you doubling over with chest pains two nights running and spending all night in Emerg waiting to have an EKG, chest Xray, and blood test as a motivator? And then I lost my bank card at the hospital, which is fairly normal behaviour for me, and spent all week remembering I had done so only to forget again instantly, which is not.
( So I got me to a nunnery )( Toronto, as such )( Husband, Wife, Girl, adventures, drunken debauchery )( OMG Oysterband! )( Aftermaths )
It was a wonderful week. I can't even begin to describe how much more grounded and sane I feel. *hugs everyone involved in making it all happen*

ETA: If you're in Alberta or BC (Or, of course, the UK, or various bits of Europe) you can still see Oysterband! Tour Schedule here

ETA2: Peter Watts' much shorter but equally enthusiastic review of the concert.

Back from Toronto, which I mean to write about in some detail soon.

But for now:



You see that arm in a pink short sleeve at the beginning of that video? The one flipping hair back out of its owner's face?

That's my arm. Chopper's cello was braced against my shoe.

Ottawa-Milwaulkee Wednesday May 21

Milwaulkee-Ottawa Monday June 2.

And because I haven't had a brane in my head nor a place to put one for the last several months, if you're going to be there drop me a comment? Because even if you told me I'm probably now confused about it.

Now I have to pack and sleep and catch a 9:30 Greyhound to Toronto, for retreat, friends, Oysterband and GIRL.

Cleverly, I put all the stuff I have to take with me ON my bed so the only way I get to sleep is to pack it.
I hate myself sometimes...

Okay, one more snow picture:



Someone's front yard in the Glebe, with the Internationally Tall iclysdale providing scale.

.

The Port-Tasting party went well. Apparently dagibbs will be providing actual, you know, commentary.

It's been Thaw[1] here for about two weeks now.

This leads to strange rituals such as Runoff Management Activity,

(Storm Sewer, with 8" ice-dam chipped away. Doesn't look like much, but it took about an hour to get it clear.)


(Drainage channel leading from sidewalk to road, so that the sidewalk water would actually make it to the sewer.)

It can all get quite elaborate.

(This was all two weeks ago, and the road is now basically ice-free.)
( more pictures, including scenery, fun with food, and some slightly gory shots of my legs, behind the cut )

And now Ian is home, so I'm off to eat samosas and sag paneer and watch some silly tv.

[1]The period, usually in March or April, when the ground is still covered in snow but the temperature stays above 0C for enough of the time that snow accumulation[2] ceases and the general level of snowpiles begins to noticeably decrease.

[2] Which reminds me: here is some video (220k, very small) that I meant to post earlier. It's from a month ago, right after the big storm, and shows iclysdale demonstrating the only known way to access the backyard when there's four feet of snow everywhere.

THIS is what it's like out today.

So, as I have cleaned the kitchen, tidied my room, and shoveled the top layers of snow off of the garden, THIS is what I'm doing now.

(Yousendit link, Neil Finn, Taking The Rest Of The Day Off. ALL THE HAPPY.)

Also, I AM WEARING SHORTS. SHORTS, PEOPLE.

*dances enthusiastically and badly*

With auriaephiala, and we have agreed that we should each do what we do best, which means that she is in charge of writing a review of Shakespeare's Dog, which was utterly fabulous, and I am in charge about ranting about the Ottawa Theatre Scene.

Or rather the after-theatre scene. Not the number, variety, or quality of plays available, mind you, because that is excellent. The Ottawa theatre community is doing an excellent job of carrying out their mandate to inform and enlighten.

It is just that they appear to have a sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere in this city, is actually going to the theatre for fun, and this frivolous approach to High Culture they are determined to stamp out.

You can't dress for the theatre in this town. At least, people do, actually -- I have seen women walk into the NAC in a howling blizzard, strip off their snowsuits to reveal an evening gown, put on their heels and check snowpants, boots, parka and all -- but God knows they don't make it easy. Once you get over the climate barrier you have to deal with the fact that the seats are tiny (I once watched the Royal Winnipeg perform with half of my dress on the lap of the gentleman next to me; after the third time it snuck out of my seat and assailed him just seemed to both of us that leaving it there was the least disruptive option), the stairs are numerous and treacherous and the toilet facilities (especially for women) are inadequate even if everyone were wearing jeans.

The NAC bars are also fairly bad, very expensive, and there aren't enough of them; given an interval of 20 minutes (smoke, pee, have a drink. Pick one. Two if you have a friend with you who can hold your place in line), you spend 5 minutes -- ten, if it's a sold-out house, which it quite often is -- waiting for your tiny, overpriced glass of sourish plonk. Which you must then gulp. They sell coffee, tea, juice, and pop, but the expensive and tiny problem still applies.

Still, there's always Le Cafe, which is excellent – and hardly ever open after the show anymore. You can go for supper BEFORE the show, always assuming that your schedule allows you to arrive at 5:30 or 6 for a 7:30 curtain, but after the show, when you want to have a quiet drink and a snack and discuss it? They're generally shut. And it's not like you can know in advance; notice how they give opening hours but not closing hours there? At least once I have made an after-show dinner reservation and gotten down there to find that although they had taken my reservation they were no longer serving food, only dessert. Tonight we tried to go down there and they were shut, at 10:30 on a night with two shows in.

Also? Coat check shuts half an hour after the final curtain of the night.

In summation: the NAC is a LOVELY theatre, which they seem determined to ensure we do not actually enjoy.

Which leaves one trudging off into the (frequently cold, sometimes snowy) night, looking for a place in downtown Ottawa where you can get a drink, possibly a snack or dessert, and enough peace and quiet to talk. Ideally near enough to the theatre that early-to-bed types are not completely worn out by the time one arrives. auriaephiala and I have been keeping a list of good after theatre-places as we discover them; it's pretty thin.

National Arts Centre and vicinity:

1) Vineyards Restaurant.

Pros: Kitchen open until 11. Long and excellent wine list. Usually quiet. Good cheese and pate. Reasonably priced.
Cons: Ten minute walk away. Actual food mediocre. Desserts ditto. Sometimes has jazz trio, not bad but very loud. Coffee and tea only okay.

2) Zoe's Lounge at the Chateau Laurier

Pros: extensive though not full menu after dinner hour, kitchen open late because it is a hotel restaurant. Excellent tea and coffee. Lovely surroundings. WONDERFUL tea, coffee, and desserts. Short but top-notch wine and spirits list. Directly across the street from the NAC. Piano bar but you can choose to sit on the lower level for music or the upper for conversation.
Cons: Expensive.

3) Elephant and Castle, Rideau Centre.

Pros: Um. Cheaper than Zoe's, especially if you want solid food.
Cons: Loudish to deafening. Large screen tvs with games on. Impossible to converse in on a game night, okay other times. Coffee and tea only okay, desserts pretty standard. Food pubbish and a bit pricey for what you get.

GCTC has just moved from Little Italy to Hintonberg; we intend, over the spring, summer and fall, to explore the after-theatre options there.

ETA: I told auriaephiala that I was going to blog this: for the second time in a row, I managed to go to the theatre in a skirt[1] which, while perfectly demure in itself, responded to being over tights and under a long winter coat (plus the fact that I have, er, "a rather old fashioned hip waist ratio[2]"), by attempting repeatedly to wrap itself around my waist.[3]

[1] Two different skirts. I do learn from experience.
[2] I have an ass the size of Nunavut, okay? Okay.
[3] Not static. Just friction plus the fact that skirts tend to creep on me anyway.

I jumped too fast, a couple of days ago, in the middle of the night.

And I'm sorry.

I should have more faith in feminists. I should have more faith in fans. Certainly I should have more faith in feminist fans.

I DO have more faith, really. I was just at a general low ebb and it combined badly with a situation with a funny smell, and... you all know what that's like, right? I hope?

So, I'm sorry. I love you all. And I'm enjoying reading the smart, thoughtful discussions going around about The Post. I don't have a lot to contribute, really, except to note that I don't think there's anything remotely unreasonable about the basic concept of subjecting Firefly to a radical feminist analysis. I like Firefly. I like Joss Whedon, far as I can tell. I have no problem accepting his claim to be pro-feminist.

But when a person identifies themselves as feminist or pro-feminist, my understanding is that they are volunteering to be held to a higher standard wrt their understanding and portrayal of gender, not claiming the right to drift down to a lower one because their heart is in the right place. I can admire his heart and still see the weak spots in his art, and I will continue to argue that the work itself is fair game for whatever critical responses it incites.

As far as identifying the sketchy spots of gender in Firefly, _allecto_ makes some reasonably good points, though they've basically been made a number of times before, without the extra, confounding layer of "I interpret everything through my own experience and my own experience alone."

And really, that's all I got. Except for politicised lady butt:

Legal Action charity Reprieve and Agent Provocateur recently unveiled a new line of Guantánamo-orange underpants emblazoned with the slogan: Fair Trial My Arse. All proceeds from this ebay auction go to Reprieve, the UK charity that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners held in the “war on terror.”

The Fair Trial My Arse initiative follows bizarre and unfounded accusations by the US military authorities that the Reprieve legal team smuggled contraband underpants into a prisoner in Guantánamo Bay.

It is hoped that the limited-edition handcuff-accessorized Agent Provocateur bikini-briefs will highlight the inhumane and illegal treatment of prisoners held without trial in Guantánamo Bay and in countless other secret prisons round the world. Two British residents remain in Guantánamo in desperate need of UK government intervention.

Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith presented the first pair of pants to Gordon Brown on February 14th as a special Valentine’s Day gift, with a letter asking him to intervene in the plight of British residents in Guantánamo Bay.

For more information about Reprieve and the case of the contraband underpants please visit www.reprieve.org.uk

I feel a new icon coming on...

iclysdale is presently reading Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley. I plan to read it when he is done.

Meanwhile, an extract he read me last night, transcribed for your dignified mourning in Zambia reading pleasure:

(From Chapter 7: The Verbs of Boro)

... Returning to the crowded stacks of the university library, I began, almost at random, to pull books off the shelves. I didn't know exactly what I wanted – instinctively, perhaps, I was searching for some proof of humanity among those dust-dry grammars and theoretical speculations. I was looking, I suppose, for a book that would lift a language off the page. The first candidate I found was A Practical Introduction to Tonga, published in London in 1953. Forget the South Pacific: Tonga, in this case, refers to a language spoken in what is now Zambia and was then called Northern Rhodesia. The author,, C.R. Hopgood, aimed his book not at scholars or students, and still less at the Tonga-speaking people themselves, but at junior officers of the British Empire. He was determined to school them in grief.

Hopgood's first lesson begins with the words Ba-ntu-ba-fwa– The people have died" – and proceeds to the Tonga worlds for "The thing is dead", "The small object is dead", and "The ferocious animals are dead." Lesson two starts off with "Get up, you little beast", and lurches ahead to "The animals bite". By lesson four, the syntax has become more complex ("The baboon is eating up all of the people's food") and the mood is growing ever darker: Bu-ntu bwa-ngu bwa-mana, "My humanity is finished." Lesson seven bears a modest resemblance to the Book of Job. "My goat has aborted"; "His sheep were attacked by wild dogs"; "My sheep's hut has fallen into disrepair"; all these mishaps lead up to the dignified distress of "wild boars have sadly depleted our crops". Were upper lips ever quite as stiff as that? The empire finds it hard to restore order. In the end, Hapgood can offer nothing more sanguine than a Tonga version of "It is bad not to hoe. Such neglect of agriculture brings troubles. it results in poor stamina."

I abandoned the stresses of farming life in the Zambezi Valley and returned to the stacks...

EDIT:

You know, I am thinking that the difficulty here is that the people who don't intuitively get the importance of attacking a bad feminist argument without feeling compelled to either pointedly and publically distance themselves from "a certain kind of feminist" or else judge the feminism of the person who makes is -- are not the people who read my lj.

The people who read my lj GET that crucial distinction.

And I have somehow given the impression that I mean YOU, when I do not.

Therefore and because I am both tired as Hell and generally not at my best atm, I have taken the text and put it in a nice comfy text file on my desktop for further consideration.

Why I am an Abortion Doctor, ganked from torrain

this is why I bought a On