no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Usually when I ask this question, I almost immediately regret bringing it up, and I guess this isn't any different.

Note: I realize that people have better things to do with their lives than post here. I do too. I guess the smell in the air just seemed worth noting, that's all.

I feel like I've talked right across your observation, LL. I'm sorry. You are usually right and have a knack for keeping positivity and the right goals in mind, so I'm interested in yr comments about the atmosphere.

I'm just saying that when open minded reasonably thick skinned people (in addition to people who have shown themselves prone to throwing loud public fits) find an atmosphere even somewhat or partially hostile, maybe it's worth trying to figure out why.
It doesn't have to be done here though.

whatever nevermind

i will say that i am listening to inxs and it is like drinking a glass of pure distilled middle school juice.

~she posts in mysterious ways~

I'm still a happy camper, but I've been distracted with weddingness. It's all done now! My free time is free again! I will spend some of it thinking of something interesting to post :P

the animal we ate
the edge serrate
human freight
gentle trait
a better rate

god this song is TERRIBLE! it sounds like enigma with a rhyming dictionary

congrats on your wedding ffm btw. the pics were fab and you looked so genuinely happy.

No! Don't never mind! I want to hear more of your observations, Amanda. If you want to email me that is okay but damn, I am always up for a little reflection/deconstruction of the dynamic of the public spaces I inhabit.

Can I just say that I love and will always love Shabooh Shabah and The Swing? Whatever my feelings on subsequent INXS albums those two remain all time favorites.

I do have a nudge of a feeling that ilx is at some kind of low w/r/t being populated by people who don't know each other irl. Maybe I just feel that way b/c a lot of the NYC contingent has dropped off, and that is actually how everyone else has felt all along. But I think there's more disregard for the Other across certain lines lately, one of which is gender, because fewer of us are personal friends and we're just typing into the interspace. Maybe.

Maybe people are also self-balkanizing a little by staying just in threads in which they know they're going to have something to say?

Maybe this is bookmarking's fault? I don't know. Meta discussions are usually the sort of thing I back away from. Including right now. You guys are clearing things up for me though, in general, and I don't have the same nagging suspicion that I'm seeing/smelling something that's not there.

Listen Like Thieves was my personal #1 fave INXS album.

Deffo am hearing in my personal life that a lot of women I know have been trying to rescue guys who just aren't that into taking responsibility for their shit and end up freeloading, financially or emotionally, and I wish I knew what was fucked with all of us for putting assholes ahead of our own well-being and/or having no survival instinct and/or never getting mad for the right reasons.

Also, periods.

Just because this is the "no boys" thread.

I have so many things to say about your observation Laurel but am crazy busy at work. Yarg!

Listen Like Thieves is fucking awesome.

I had Listen Like Thieves on tape at the same time that I had Achtung Baby, and that's probably all you need to know.

Jenny, I'm super excited to hear your thoughts later! But since I'm just talking to myself here anyway, here's another one:

My dad made a comment while I was in MI that it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to be a little more feminine, which is incredibly silly and wrong-headed and he doesn't even MEAN it, really, because he's proud of me for my independence and practical abilities and in fact HAS NURTURED THEM AND REWARDED ME FOR THEM ALL MY LIFE. But I can't un-hear it.

What he really means, of course, is for me to be less sharp and less opinionated and make dudes more comfortable so they want to be around me more because I make them feel so good about themselves. And of course stopping being those sharp things is exactly what kills me when I start to care about someone, because I pull myself and my needs back in order not to threaten (or even bother) them with my needs. And I'm sure my tendency to hurt myself this way is totally not unconnected to my having watched my parents do it for 40 years!

This upsets me. It's 2011.
WTF.

Yeah but he's a dad, he doesn't think like a 2011 person. And if I told him that it's 2011 and his expectations were out of date, he'd respond, "Making people more comfortable never goes out of date, Laurel."

He of course does not strive to make others comfortable or secure AT ALL, possibly because he doesn't have the first idea how to.

He probably thinks he does, though -- he's just wrong. Anyway this isn't really about him, or possibly even about me. Putting it out there.

That he said it doesn't upset me; that you took it to heart does!

Yeah, I guess huh.

A hand-calligraphied, illuminated, matted, and framed copy of this poem hung on my bedroom wall all my life. I may have...I may have taken it a tiny bit too seriously. At heart it's a horror -- it would require a woman to be everything to everyone and yet no ONE. Not actually a person. I can't...this is really upsetting to me.

Christ almighty.

If you can find a cure for cancer
but don't be a BITCH about it

That poem is one of the worst things I have ever read. Would not be sad if the person who wrote it died horribly.

illuminated?!
that is a horrifying image and a terrible poem

xp emil.y otm

Illuminated with colored inks and gold leaf around the capital letters. Not as in "lit up". Thank goodness for small favors?

KEEP IT COMING. I can almost feel your combined loathing from here, and it's doing me good.

It's super duper messed up to the max to tell all women to act the same way, esp. if that way is "like good girls."

what the fucking fuck with that poem

oh ugh! I think my mom once gave me a birthday card with that poem on it, or some updated one that was a bit less insulting, but still "for girls," mainly because she really liked the Kipling original. I think we had a brief argument about it, and i think we agreed that a) this "for girls" version was mediocre poetry and b) that i really dislike mass-produced holiday cards in general

"what the fucking fuck"
http://noirbettie.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/7c96e6f1db054ef381b8ce9eebcdeadb.jpg

also, hi everyone, i am on my period atm

thank god my parents (or my mom, at least) were more the "Free to Be You and Me" types

<3 Amelia Lolhart

I should point out, in case you don't know me, that my dad also put paintbrushes and power sanders and a full set of socket wrenches in our hands when we were like 10 years old, and he built me a dune buggy as a first car, and bursted his buttons with pride the first time I biked 100 miles in a day, and stuff. My personal drama is more about being good at all THAT stuff AND everything else, too. In fact, at everything. Just in case the world is having an off day and needs you to save it.

If you don't, it will be your fault.

RIP if only she had tried harder to be perfect.

RIP if only she had tried harder to be perfect.

shit, yeah ... :(

ofmg that poem

Laurel you must print a copy and that poem and ritually burn it while chanting "I don't owe it to anybody to be nice or attractive" or something similarly appropriate.

Styled by 13 year old me, cherished and lovingly photographed by 36 year old me

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6195/6071235301_9004b3463b.jpg

those gold sleeve things! Was there a particular barbie outfit that those came with? Thinking about them decades after the fact, they are really a pretty odd garment.

I see someone's been at the hemming lace.

yes! they came with a barbie i had that was all dressed in gold and i am pretty sure she is the one who became this barbie. the top is an orange lace ribbon i found in my grandma's sewing box, and her pants were, apparently, stockings in a previous life? i don't really remember life before this barbie very well, tbh.

she didn't wear shoes. i never made a ken for her or even any friends, but she has sat on my dresser in all of my rooms/apartments over the years. i found her in my junk drawer and regret keeping her in there for so long.

Hem lace or tape whatever that shit is called, I just made that up. Love her!

P sure the gold things were meant to be...gloves, but Barbie hands looked stupid in gloves?? Or else they were just opera "mitts", I dunno. I feel like a number of ballet recital costumes from that era may have had something similar in which the point over the hand was held down by a loop of elastic around the middle finger?

also, i just wanna say, that i wish i knew more of you ilx ladies irl

likewise

i think barbie didn't look good in gloves because she didn't have any FINGERS

Or toes! Or ribs! Or anything so troublesome as genitalia!

I would also love to know more of the ladies irl. For someone addicted to a message board I am preeeety hopeless at interaction on message boards.

Laurel, lest you think you are a doormat, I have not forgotten your 'There is no Laurel buffet' comment on the breakup thread. I did stay friends with my ex, but that comment *really strongly* influenced how I did it.

i have a song that is somewhat relevant to the discussion and also makes me lol a little:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vajWi4a6ehk