Today I went with Sparkly

to the evening service for Yom Kippur.

So like. The person I saw talking about this was very aware that ths is a gut reaction and not a serious claim, so don’t be mad at them, but I still need to sit down and reconsider my whole existence anyway, because there’s an emotionally abusive character in one of the Imperial Radch books and, get this,

Continue reading “Oh my god I need to take a break from existence” →

I have to keep reminding myself

that it takes time for me to bounce back after very noisy events. It’s not actually surprising at all that I’d be feeling tired and blah today (even though the venue for the debate party was really nice and I’m glad we went.)

Dear self:

It’s A Good Thing that you didn’t try to do a bunch of work today.

It’s A Good Thing that you didn’t run out and do errands today.

It’s A Good Thing that you mostly just sat quietly while Sparkly was at class.

It means you’ll be better prepared to run out and do things tomorrow. It’s fine.

The two worst things in politics right now

IMHO.

1. People saying Hillary Clinton “defended a rapist” as if that makes her a bad person, when what happened was she served as the defense attorney for a rapist. Because she was literally ordered to by a judge.

2. Republicans calling Hillary Clinton a “victim blamer” because she initially didn’t believe Monica Lewinski. And apparently there are other people who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault? And suddenly Republicans just care So Much about sexual assault that Hillary not believing her husband is a rapist makes her a terrible person.

I don’t know enough details to really have an opinion, but like. I can understand why someone whose husband is a very high-profile politician– unlike a random average person– might actually have reason to think people would make false accusations against him.

And I can understand why someone who is in the often very sexist view of the public eye, would be reluctant to publicly condemn her husband.

It may not be Great Feminist Solidarity but it sounds more like regular old human error than depraved rape apologism to me.

Why why why am I stuck in front of a TV for this. Why couldn’t we be talking about Trump sniffling?

IDK why I’m so sure

that our landlord truly is just innocently, unintentionally rude and forgetful, not malicious, but I am. Anyway he forgot to pay the cable bill last month and our service got cut off, so we had to call him and remind him that he wanted to keep the cable/Internet under his name, so that means he’s the one who has to remember to pay it, and that the amount on the checks I send him is the original rent-plus-some-utilities amount we all agreed to plus our portion of the cable bill.

He did take care of it promptly after we called him, so at least there’s that.

Things Minty is reading

I finished a book today which was by and large really good, but it’s part of a pattern that kind of bugs me, which is this:

— A teen/young adult character

— starts to question their sexuality

— because they had an established “straight” crush or relationship but now they also have a same-gender crush

— a love triangle ensues in which they have to decide between a male love interest and a female love interest.

I’m all for having more bi characters, and I realize that the most straightforward or obvious way to show that a character is bi is to have them be attracted to two people of different genders, but like.

When you tie it to two individual people (and only two people, with no mention of them being attracted to anyone else), and make the bi character choose between them, it kind of tends to come off like they’re not really bi?

Like, if the bi character “goes back to” their original “straight” love interest, it makes it seem like they’re giving up the chance to explore not being straight.

And if… who am I kidding, the books I’ve seen do this all slant towards the “straight” relationship.* And also the bi character is a girl IDK why I attempted to make this gender-neutral.

Also some of them have the bi girl main character date/kiss/make out with both love interests within the same timeframe, in a way that isn’t quite technically cheating but does sort of skirt around it. And I don’t think straight love triangles tend to do that as much, outside of, like, soap operas? Which is also not great.

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* If the bi character doesn’t decide she was never really in love with the guy, at least. I’ve seen some books do that. And I came away thinking they were implying that the main character was actually a lesbian, so.

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Basically the subtext of this post is that I didn’t like Adaptation by Malinda Lo, and then I just finished another book that did a similar thing, so here I am. Can we just have the bi characters without the love triangles please? Let them break up with their boyfriends and then develop feelings for a girl. There would still be angst. They would still be bi. Please.

Possibly I should question why the idea of someone having equally strong feelings for two people at once bugs me this much, since I’m polyamorous, but really what bugs me is the concept that you have to try out all the people you’re attracted to, but once you’ve done that you can pick just one.

Plus the substitution of sexual attraction and/or romantic crush feelings for actually knowing anything about the person on a basic “do we get along with each other” level.

IDK. I didn’t like Adaptation.

Sparkly had a meeting

with the rabbi today, and it was a good thing ey brought a big bag, because ey came home with it stuffed full of books. Between leaving the synagogue at about 5PM, and now (11:30PM), ey has almost completely finished reading Choosing a Jewish Life. And that’s with taking time out to walk home from the metro station and watch the evening news.

Edit: It’s 11:53 and ey just finished it. Round of applause for the fastest reader I know.

It really fucking sucks

that the average person’s idea of what meditation is is so overwhelmingly defined by clueless New Age-y people either in real life or in fiction. And I feel silly talking about it, because (a) I really really don’t want to downplay the harm those clueless people do by e.g. treating it as a panacea for every problem and pestering people to try it, and (b) I don’t even know That much about it, but, I don’t think it’s a joke? And it bugs me that so many people do.

Yum

I convinced Sparkly that we should go to the grocery store after dinner and get apples and fancy honey, and I’m glad I did, both because Observing Holidays and because we got orange blossom honey and it was delicious.