Momentary Gods

Update: i am now posting book reviews. I have no idea how many people ever read this, but i figure i might as well state this anyway: i don't mind spoilers of any kind for anything, and i don't warn for spoilers, so assume anything behind a cut is spoilery.

On this blog: i cuss. I use a lowercase first-person-singular (i.e. "i") except at the start of sentences or (usually) when referring to someone else. I use the singular "they" or sometimes even (gasp!) "it" to refer to persons of other or uncertain gender, or groups of mixed gender. I use slightly modified spivak pronouns when referring to myself in 3rd. (e, em, er, ers, emself) You can use those when referring to me or not; i honestly don't care as long as you're not being an ass about it and i know you're referring to me. I do know proper grammar and spelling; when i eff things up, it's either deliberate or i'm severely sleep-deprived. Either way, i don't really care if it bothers you. This blog is my personal journal, my diary, on the internet. Public because i feel like it, basically, but still my journal, which basically sums up everything i could say about it quite nicely.

Also, this sticky post is now old (hence me lj-cutting the intro paragraphs) but still important, so if i have any "top of the page" info to post, i'll just keep editing this. Just so's y'all know.

On commenting: Be polite or i ban your ass. My blog, my whims. Spam me and you will likewise be banninated.

On linking: Any public post may be linked freely.

( Old intro stuff.Collapse )

( This is who I am.Collapse )

And i am now scared shitless, having tons of second thoughts. Not about sexual predators or that sort of thing, but about even putting myself out there like this.

***

I never dated. I had a relationship with one guy at the family church - i considered him a good, if touchy-feely, friend, and he pretty obviously considered me his girlfriend. I didn't mind, as long as he didn't push. Which he didn't. When he left to go to another church, we parted amicably. Every time we've seen each other since, which is almost never, it's been friendly.

It's hard, dating, especially when you're genderweird and asexual. It's bad enough i worry about how people will take my idiosyncratic religion, or my lack of income to bring to the table. (Yes, i worry about that shit. True love is wonderful and all, but so is paying the bills.) I was filling out the profile, and it kept asking me questions like "what hair color do you prefer" and "which of these photos do you find sexy" and ... i was just all: bzuh?

If there's anything that drives home my asexuality, it's that.

(There really ought to be an option for "it doesn't matter" or "all of them?")

***

So why did i join a dating site?

Because i'm lonely. Because being a shy, somewhat socially inept pagan/heretic ace genderweird person living at home with er mother doesn't mean i don't want to find a person i can spend the rest of my life with.

I joined now because Mom and i are being forced to move, yet again, because our shitty landlord won't repair the roof. We're moving pretty far (in NoVAn terms) - an hour+ outside our current area, far enough that it's pretty much a clean break from life now, near enough that we can still get people over for holidays with little fuss. Mom's found her dream home; i'm along for the ride, trying to help her settle in. I'll be taking care of the house and cooking and all, like i already am, but it's even more important now that she has an hour+ commute to work, and will be working for the next four years. I have to take care of her, y'know?

But it's a break, and i'll be too far away from the few friends i had still living in the area, and the few hangout spots i had, to really keep in contact. (Esp. since i still can't drive, which is about to become kind of an issue.) So it's rather the perfect time to take that sort of drastic (to me) step.

***

I'm scared, though.

I'm scared because of my dad, who is as charming and intelligent a gentleman as you'll ever meet, until you're his family and you're all behind closed doors and he's had a wee bit too much to drink or a stressful day or whatever. I know only too well that the face people show to the world isn't their only face, and I know that it's not easy to spot abusers in the crowd. I'm terrified of being trapped.

I'm scared because this is Virginia, and further away from the area i know, in more conservative country. I'm scared that i'll run into the kind of patriarchal, authoritarian, fundamentalist assholes i know are out there, and that i won't be able to spot them coming, either. I'm scared that i'll run into someone who plays the "I can totally live with your beliefs" game until i'm committed, then tries to convert me. And this goes equally for religion and politics. (It's why i'm upfront about both in my profile.)

I'm scared because i'm nowhere near the ideal beauty standards for a female-bodied person, and that's all people seem to want in their profiles. I'm scared that i'm too ugly in others' eyes to be worth a moment's chance, that i won't find a person because my packaging is wrong. (That's why i sucked it up and posted a profile pic of me being goofy as shit.)

I'm scared because i've heard - from people and from society - all my life that i'll have to settle. That men can be demanding in choosing girlfriends, but that i can't be so picky or no one will want me. I don't want to settle. I want a person who's kind, funny, compassionate, tolerant (in the good sense), and gentle with my damage. I don't see how that's too much to ask.

***

But mostly, i'm scared because i'm not normal. I'm scared that someone will find my profile, we'll hit it off, things'll get serious, and e'll stumble on this, or i'll tell em about my genderweird and my asexuality, and e'll feel like e's been tricked. Like this was all one massive bait and switch on my part. That e went in expecting a woman and got a monster or a freak or a fraud or a lunatic.

And there's no place in my profile to warn them, really.

***

In the end, though, joining this site is an act of hope. It's my way of saying that yes, i do believe i'm worth companionship and i do believe i'm a worthy companion, and i even believe that someone might find me worth loving, genderweirdness and asexuality and nutty religion and all. It's also my way of saying that i do want to be social, that i don't want to be lonely, and that i don't believe i have to settle for anything.

After all, i get to choose too.

Been a while since i posted here, but eh.

Dunno if anyone's noticed, but i usually wait for movies to come out on TV before watching them. So yeah, this means i can't actually fulfill my dream of being a movie reviewer who matters, since that generally requires some kind of timeliness (which requires, y'know, money), but i figure that sort of late-to-the-ballgame self-indulgence is precisely what journals are for.

Yesterday, the TV had an all-day marathon of all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies. (I think it was on ABC Family; honestly, i don't pay much attention to the channels i watch.)

( Here are my thoughts on the whole series.Collapse )

In sum:
Curse of the Black Pearl: a really solid, fun movie that introduced memorable characters and had a solid, understandable plot arc that was fully resolved in the movie.
Dead Man's Chest: felt like two movies mashed together to create an unfortunate whole - a movie along the lines of the first, with a new supernatural macguffin and new secondary characters, and a movie un-resolving the first movie so that Will and Elizabeth could return. The latter borks the whole thing and retroactively ruins CBP, and the whole movie is a sprawling, unresolved muddle.
At World's End: exists only to re-fix what DMC broke, and to find some resolution to all the many dangling threads of the DMC mess. Sucks all the life - and, more importantly, humor and fun - out of the franchise. Can be skipped without missing much of anything, since it doesn't really do anything new.
On Stranger Tides: this is essentially the movie DMC could've (and should've) been, albeit with a different macguffin. I'd say watch CBP, watch DMC if you want for the not-Will and Liz stuff, skip AWE, and watch this one.

I'd totally watch any new movie in the franchise now, which i wasn't planning on after DMC and certainly not planning after AWE.

So last year i started working at the local new age shop as an unpaid intern in exchange for attending workshops. It rapidly moved from a Sundays-only thing to a "whenever we need you" thing, and i was working. As in, running the register, cleaning the store, and doing whatever else the owners wanted.

I tried to drop back to Sundays only about two months ago, because of school, only to be told that was fine, but i would then no longer qualify for getting the workshops paid for.

So i quit. I informed them that they weren't compensating me fairly - they told me they felt they were.

And now it looks like they might have violated the law.

It's admittedly a bit unclear if a dinky little new-age shop qualifies as a "for-profit business" in the sense meant by the law, but i suspect it probably does. In other words, the instant they had me doing any actual employee-like work, they should have been paying me minimum wage.

Take that, Sticks and Stones. It's not just my own sense of self-worth talking here; the law agrees with me. You weren't providing me with fair compensation, but engaging in wage theft.

That i don't qualify for financial aid this semester - my last, i might add - because the financial aid department has decided that a full degree should be only 110 credits and i already have that, and the school has a policy of not allowing people to take any extra classes at all.

The rest of the school, by contrast, thinks the degree is 121 credits, which would, y'know, be why i'm even signing up for another semester.

Aaaaaand to make matters worse, they're insisting i need to fax them my W-2 for the past year, because i've been "randomly chosen for verification", despite me not having worked a paid job in years. Exactly how am i supposed to send them a nonexistent form?

I've resubmitted the package with all of this pointed out, so we'll see.

"You are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours . . . was lost and is found."

I do understand the point of the parable of the prodigal son. I do. Honest.

( And i hate it.Collapse )

When you're trying to use the old "i'm a published author, so i totally know everything about writing - how dare you criticize what i say" line, it is probably a good idea to make sure that the person you're pulling that line on is not emself a published author, with more (and more widely known) books to er name than you have.

This, right here, is why i still skim comments sections, because i am exactly the kind of nasty little soul that finds this hilarious.

***

Also, fyi: even those of us who are not (yet) published authors can have meaningful opinions on writing. Not everyone who writes has been published (or even wants to be), which doesn't make their writing experience less valid, and even people who don't write can have a solid understanding of the process, and can certainly have a solid and meaningful opinion on the product, since, y'know, you don't have to write to be able to read.

Sigh. I wish the "but i'm puuuuuuuuuuuuublished!" appeal to one's own authority would DIAF already.

A reasonably popular deconstruction blog, where the blogger repeatedly shuts down any "off-topic" comment, because this violates "safe space."

Off-topic, in the blogger's mind, being defined as disagreeing even mildly with any statement the blogger makes, asking for clarification, disagreeing with any commenter a mod hasn't already jumped on, expanding on a point, following a logical conversation chain, talking about something brought up by another commenter without referencing what the blogger said in the main post, or talking about anything in a chapter under deconstruction that the blogger did not specifically bring up emself. I can link to examples for every one of those, but i won't for the same reason i'm not naming the blog.

All this, because apparently the only way a blog is a "safe space" is if it has a really narrow definition of "appropriate and on-topic," which amounts to basically: "oh wow, blogger, your decon is so wonderful, i never noticed x/y/z before, thank you for pointing out what a shit the author was." Except, of course, you can't say "shit," without at least a major "content note."

People have been banned for straying from this.

I have never commented on this blog and never will, and though i at first found the decons interesting, it's descending into echo-chamber territory, and the decons are starting to suffer for it.

And people wonder why i have major, major issues with the concept of "safe space" in the blogosphere.

Was a part of the prayer room of a mosque (according to the plaque; i do not know the proper term), set into the wall of one of the Freer's* galleries.

Most of the other objects in the museums, you can believe they were bought fairly. Or at least that the collectors made the attempt, even if the folks who sold it to them might have been somewhat sketchy. Most of the objects in the galleries are objects, things like plates and cups and pitchers, lanterns and bells, statues small enough to be moveable because they are, after all, housed in a rather small museum. Illustrated books. Cylinder seals. Coins. Stamps. Decorations.

And part of a mosque wall. And Buddhist carvings, torn out of a cave (or temple; i don't recall the plaque making it especially clear) wall.

And someone's front door, over in the African Art Museum, and all the plaque says is that some guy went to Africa and saw these doors on the houses of the people, and they intrigued him. I have no idea how he got his door - did he ask? Buy one fairly? Or coerce people, intentionally or not, into giving him their door?

This is one reason i like these museums: they shove the problematic aspects of art collection and Western museum/gallery displays right in your face.

This is why i hate museums: i have no idea if this was deliberate, and showing how problematic your collection is doesn't mean that it's still not problematic.

I wonder how they got that mosque bit.

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*Possibly Sackler's. I get those two confused, since they're essentially two parts of the same museum.

So these past few days i've been down with cluster headaches, and then recovering from the swarm, and so in between bouts i've been catching up on my reading. The theme this week, entirely by accident, has been on race and the media.

One thing that's been noted by numerous people in relation to both African and Native American portrayals in Western media is that both are often used as shorthand for "primitive", whatever primitive means in context. Either way, it erases the real people and real cultures still alive today.

All else being equal, there's at least a bit of a case for using African connotations for early humanity, since last i heard the Out of Africa theory of human origins is still the most widely accepted.

But all else isn't equal.

***
( More thoughts.Collapse )