After a really long hiatus, I appear to be posting regularly again, but not here; rather at a Blogger blog, Rhymes With Truculent.

I still read blogs over here, and comment using this handle, which I like better than using OpenID for RwT, which I've played with. I might post here occasionally when I need a more secure space, but I might not -- so the blogger blog is a better place to find me.

ETA: mmph, but I have not been good at reading blogs over here; what I should have said is that I am catching up.

I have miles to go before I sleep tonight, but there is a seriously awesome discussion of this Michael Pollan article taking place here, and I ought to say more about it, but in the mean time, here's my brief comment:


Besides the asshattery about cooking being women's responsibility, what really stood out to me was he seems to make the "end" of cooking all about effort, and barely ever mentions the idea of actually loving the act of eating. Oh, yes, he mentions the beef bourguignon that he loved after his mother learned the technique from Julia, but I think that's the only place that the verb "love" shows up in the article. Otherwise, cooking seems to be mainly an academic activity or a way that women can attain self-respect.

I don't know whether he's one of the people who needlessly frets/obsesses over obesity (I've been meaning to read his books, but I haven't yet), and whether that's the reason that he's so focused on cooking, rather than eating, but for someone who purports to be devoted to food, I found his article to be severely joyless.

If you're reading this, despite my being awful at updating my LJ, I would like to know what it means to you to love food, and what foods you love, and any of your impressions, vague or concrete, about what it was like when you came to love any certain food, or foods.

I am barely involved in LJ anymore (writing a dissertation will do that to you), and even when I was involved, I wasn't involved in SFF fandom. I know exactly one person (or have exactly one person on my flist) who has posted on this, I think, and another one person connected with some of the people involved.

I've learned a lot watching it. I'm embarrassed to say that when, early on, someone posted complaining that Avalon's Willow and deepad and others were reading emotionally instead of academically, and why did they just want to bitch instead of giving productive advice about how white people could write POC better...all that ... I'm embarrassed because it took me a little while thinking about it to get it.

Maybe embarrassed is the wrong word. But I mean that it can be startling to see my own privilege revealed. Because it didn't have to be the main subject of any posts for me to be able to see it.

Anyway. If you've been writing about RaceFail, and you've been linked in rydra_wong's linkspam, chances are good that I've read what you said, and I'm grateful to you for saying it, at whatever cost.

If you haven't been reading about RaceFail09, even if you're worried that it will overwhelm you, you ought to go and read some of those links. I'm not putting you under any obligation to respond to them, because I neither have nor want that power. But you ought to read them, at least.

A few summary statements.

I stand by Avalon's Willow's critique of Blood and Iron 100%.

I do not believe in an academic/emotional criticism binary. Good criticism has emotion. We can talk about I. A. Richards, if you'd like, but not in this entry.

Outing someone on the internet, wherein outing them involves posting their given name in close proximity to their pseudonym or LJ username, is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Even if you think someone has already outed themselves, you're amping up the chance of the two being connected. Don't be malicious with someone else's information, no matter how open you may be about your own.

Elizabeth Bear's post, entitled Cease Fire, was really disappointing to me. Because I felt like she had handled the situation fairly gracefully. Please note that I said "fairly." Not perfectly. And then, today, she went and took back all the things that had made me pleased about her response, and
framed her exit in terms that were, well, pantsless. When you address the internet thusly:


It used to be so good. We had a good thing going. We talked. I felt like you really listened. But you've changed. You're not the same.
You've started behaving erratically. I suspected an affair at first, or drugs, but I have to face the facts.
You've gone crazy. And I just can't be with you anymore.


That. Looks. Bad. As though you're saying "It used to be all about me, in ways that I could control, and now it's not. Waaaaah!" and that was just in the first 50 words.

One of the things that I think we've all been taught, in some context, is that when you get tired, or angry, you say stupid things. Things that you will regret. Those things don't go away, can rarely be taken back.

I think I understand a little of what made E. Bear post that today. I think I understand a little of what made Teresa Nielsen Hayden post her screed, also highly problematic. Or maybe I should say that I assume that I am capable of saying/doing really stupid things. I assume that I am less careful about saying/doing those stupid things than a POC might be, specifically because I have plenty of white privilege. It is easy to misuse that privilege.

This is not to say that I am endorsing either of their posts. Or to say "oh, they are just angry; and really, their views are not problematic." Their views ARE problematic. And I do not want this conversation to be silenced. I'm barely part of it, in terms of posting here on LJ. But I'm posting in support of it, because it is not just a problem that POC need to work on, but a problem that I need to work on, too. I think I should also add that I'm in no position to judge them except by what they wrote on their LJs, and much as those statements may upset me, I am aware that they have lives outside of LJ, which I don't get to judge. My point, though: the thing I need to say, is just this: if you're angry, STOP before you hit publish. Stop, wait 24 hours, have a friend (or three!) look at what you're saying....STOP. Wait. If you feel that your piece has to be said Right Away, then it's possible it shouldn't.

I think that this link says everything that needs to be said, far more eloquently than I could say it.

I saw Sweeney Todd as an undergrad, the Len Cariou/Angela Lansbury version, and then a stage production at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle; and then I taught it twice to my comp classes, in a unit with Joan Didion's "Sentimental Journeys" (about news narratives, and the Central Park Jogger) and Angela Carter's "The Fall River Axe Murders" (which takes Lizzie Borden right up to murdering her parents, and stops). All in all, a neat package for talking about violence and rhetoric. Plus, I only encountered one student who was actually familiar with Sweeney Todd.

I sort of meant to see the movie, even though Johnny Depp is a pretty boy tenor (instead of a baritone), and even though I worried that it was going to be Goth'd up. And then, you know, I didn't. Until someone reminded me of it today; and prompted me to find a website streaming it for free.

Numerous directors (of stage and screen both) have tried to portray people who are driven by desperation to choose violence. Sometimes this storyline will consider at what point the subject crosses over some sort of invisible boundary of the soul, a point of no return.

In Sweeney Todd, this point of no return is part of Sondheim's focus; but even more important is watching how other characters react when the boundary is crossed. Instead of portraying the crisis as though it takes place in the vacuum of one character's heart, the audience gets to see a sort of domino effect, where all the characters push and pull each other in and out of the danger of doing terrible things. The really remarkable thing is that Sondheim manages to show this occurring for nearly every member of the cast. Todd may be the figure who gives the play its name, but in contrast with, say, a Greek tragedy like Oedipus Rex, the secondary characters are much more forcefully active than, say, Jocasta or Tiresias.

The result is an unpleasantly moving meditation on the effects of corruption (of the law, of the soul) in community.

But it's also a very bloody, harsh, and disturbing play. And it's nearly impossible to think straightforwardly about the themes because neither that intimate boundary of the soul, nor corruption's effects on a community are outwardly visible things. To try and show them realistically only demonstrates how far away one is from grasping any of their power. You cannot have Todd, reunited with his razors, singing, "Hello, my friends," and oblivious to Mrs. Lovett's overtures, and play it as realism. It's hokey. It's a sham.

Presenting it as a musical removes some of the realism; so does the traditional staging, in which minimal sets, almost just scaffolding, are wheeled on and off the stage as needed. The vocal delivery is just shy of operatic, and it takes about 30 seconds to see that Johanna, Todd's daughter, is completely demented. It takes 30 seconds if the actress playing her is mediocre.

The only realistic thing, in contrast to all this over-the-topness, is the blood, when it occasionally gushes out. And gushes again, at shorter intervals near the climax of the play. It's the thin thread that holds everything else together, and drags all the exaggerated portrayals into terrible reality.

So why in God's name Tim Burton decided to play the cast, the setting, the script, and the singing all for realistic naturalism, while amping up the blood from the opening credits, and thus creating a veritable river that washes everything away into artificiality...well. I guess that's Burtonizing.

At the grocery this afternoon, there were men dressed as giant strips of bacon, advertising (and offering samples of) certified kosher Baconnaise. (No, I'm not linking. I refuse to make their advertising easier).

"Do you want to take the Baconnaise challenge?" asked the perky saleswoman with them?

"I can't. It's an abomination."

"No, it's kosher!"

"That's why it's an abomination," I replied. I wish I had a photo of the bacon strips and the girl puzzling over that.

My mother, who is quite mad, used to make delicious Cornish pasties, not like the ones you buy at the Cornish Pasty Co. in London, but real ones. And when I left I did not think to get the recipe. But I think I've found an appropriate substitute here and my kitchen smells delicious. Though I see that I overfilled the pasties, and some juice is leaking. Practice will make perfect, assuming they taste as good as they smell.

This show becomes increasingly pointed. And increasingly dull! Simultaneously! It's an antagonym!

alas, in a word, I am: unexcited

Spoilers within.
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I should add: I want to like this show because of roles that I've played, as an admin/executive assistant -- and continued to play as an academic. Do you have a massive and costly problem as a result of an employee who left suddenly, revealing that s/he had been bullshitting his/her job for months? Call me. Do you have a weird situation where someone seems to be forging references, but also looks legit? I'll figure it out. Do you need a champagne reception in under 30 minutes, or need to be taught how to convincingly perform "The Lady is a Tramp" by supper this evening? I can help you.*

And I've felt, more than once, as though I need to shed personas as adeptly as any wannabe Hollywood starlet. I suspect that any one in a number of corporate situations has felt the same way.

In short, what I really want? Is a show about Doctor Donna Noble, TimeLord SuperTemp!

And yet, clearly Russell T Davies and Joss Whedon were thinking on similar wavelenghts. Sporks for both of them. Maybe Moffat will fix things, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

*Yes, I have done all these things.

I think I understand what Whedon is trying to do:

The "high concept" of Dollhouse is this: men actively fighting misogyny/sexism.

Or coming to the realization that they need to fight it, and fighting it.

The Dollhouse is meant to be both a realistic and symbolic stand-in for misogyny, sexism, and objectification of women. We think that Echo is the main character, but that's really a bait-and-switch; the important figures are everyone else: watching Boyd and Ballard face off against Topher, DeWitt, & Leonard.

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I don't really know whether I'm onto something or way off base with this. I'd welcome other peoples' views.

...but I'm annoyed enough that I don't feel polite enough to manage greetings and closings.

There has been a fierce debate over cultural appropriation and racism, spreading all over LJ.

I think:

1. It was an important debate to have, but gosh, it hasn't cost me much of anything, because I'm not arguing with multiple close friends/casual friends/colleagues/strangers all at once. So saying that it was "important" feels downright shallow and callous of me. I think I learned things from it, and I don't think I'm the only one, and hard conversations are worth having instead of pretending that everything will get better with out them, but still. People on both sides have been hurt. And I can't really think of an equivalent situation that ripped through a chunk of my social network, the way that this seems to have ripped through other people's.*

2. I don't know whether it was weirdly brilliant or awful that the Criminal Minds episode for this week also features problematic cultural appropriation. I think it was weirdly awful, both because I think the people having this debate are exhausted, and need space and silence to reflect; and because this episode of Criminal Minds came SO CLOSE (I think) to showing just how problematic cultural appropriation can be.

Spoilers below the cut, natch.

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* Actually, now that I think about it, I can. When I was 12, I played piano on a "worship team" for my family's medium-sized Nazarene church. We had three singers, me on keyboard, and a drummer. One morning at church, there was an announcement. Two of singers had announced that they were in love with each other, and were leaving their spouses (who were also both members of the church).

This said, I can't claim that, at 12, I was in a position to have my social circle ripped apart by this event. Even as a member of the worship team.

Spoilers below:

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LJ_Redzils, I owe you an email as soon as grading is done.

I am only momentarily stopping to say that I have been looking at this necklace for a couple of months, and am beginning to be terribly tempted by it.
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Isn't it pretty?