no boys allowed in the room!!!!

tbh that would be my cue to crack the whip

"look how lilywhite and silky soft your hands are,
they should be in shreds from the sting of the bitter grape's thorn as God promised"

i think i posted about this before, but once i was drunk in nashville and tried to give myself gram parsons' haircut. it turned out to just be a huge bang cut very crazy. bandmate upon first viewing of haircut: "this is grim"

― carpathian florist (roxymuzak), Friday, July 3, 2009 11:17 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

still growing this out tbh

Hahaha

Y'all I have had a peace lily for almost three years and it is not only not dead, like every other potted thing i have attempted to grow, but it looks amazing. Jesse gave it to me for my cube at work. It even bloomed again, which I read is somewhat unusual.

BTW that 'noticing how soft the workers' hands are' has I'm sure been used for everything from olive oil to, I don't know, nappies or something. I feel like I'm always hearing that line!

Honest to god, when she started the spiel I really thought it would end "when she noticed how the workers' hands were rough and chapped from labor so she invented this amazing hand cream for them." Seriously.

Nice face is required from me at work much of the time as my job is all about persuading people they want to do stuff. Recently I've noticed I'm rebelling and getting snappy at certain people. I take my job too personally.

This is probably a bit heavy for a Monday morning, but here it is anyway:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/25/child-free-women-jody-day

I can't decide if articles like this make me feel better or make me feel worse.

On the one hand it's like, OK, sure, this is a thing, it's not just me, there are a lot of chords being struck. But on the other hand... The social ostracism thing. That's just depressing as fuck, and it seems unfair on both sides, but geez.

I have the experience that friends cool off vastly when they enter long-term partnerships, get married or whatever, but when they have children, it's like they drop off the face of the planet. Except, I never looked at it this way before, actually, it's that they drop you off the face of the planet. Eh, it's probably nicer thinking that than the truth that people drop you coz you're actually kind of a weirdo freak asshole.

But, the whole thing is very melancholic for a Monday morning, and now, here, you can have some of that melancholy, too.

^I read that too and while some of it was familiar, she didn't engage with the whole SINGLE PERSON IN THE BAGGING AREA paranoia in certain friendship groups who are coupled up and then only remember to socialize with friends who mirror their own coupledom (or parenthood). Are the women threatened when I talk to their partners? Maybe there's something at the animal level that mistrusts the rogue female, but I can't be responsible for someone else's neuroses and projections. I will grant that for a lot of my friends with kids, it's easier for them to socialize with each other because they don't have to worry about where to park their kids if their hosts have children too. Having been one-half of a very social couple, I can report that a lot of our choices involved seeing a friend of one partner or the other (and that person's partner) of an evening, going to less private views and gigs, and that multi-friend gatherings had to be more planned out than the impromptu nature of a social life when most people are single or in short-term relationships, or expected to socialize a lot with work colleagues.

I've known since I bought my first box of tampons/read my childhood oncology reports that I'd probably never have kids, partner or not. What I really don't like is a suggestion that parents are acting in a more age-appropriate way than I am; it's condescending and I'd rather not throw around my medical records as a guiltweapon against people who patronise or pry. Some men I know fall into a pattern of taking childless people less seriously because they're a parent now, as if any of their parenting involves the heavy lifting or they want a medal from womankind for meeting some very, very basic responsibilities. I actually got fed up with one acquaintance's New Man dadbragging and asked if he was the one with the stretch marks.

Glad to see you're posting, WCC. I refrained for six months (and am only really dipping in on grrrlsthread for this one comment) because I had a last-straw moment with the way male posters were treating you at the time. I hope you find a non-soul-destroying form of employment ASAP, as you must be due some redistributive karma soon.

SUZY!!!! pleased to see you here.

You too - come over after Kernewek this week, yo. Might also add that I'm procrastinating a deadline wherein Antony of the Johnsons goes on AT LENGTH about how 'toxic maleness' is killing the world (but I'll be finished by then).

I need to unload a teeny bit today, I'm sorry. Something has been bugging me. A few days ago, a friend I rarely see confided that her boyfriend is physically abusive, and showed us bruises on her wrists. She has...taken some legal & protective steps but hasn't made the break-up stick.

On the way home from seeing her, the other person I was with was expressing how sad and confused she is that anyone would stay with an abuser. THEN SHE SAYS, "On the other hand, what if {the abused girlfriend} is the only person who can do this really good thing for him, of staying together until he figures it out?" Like she was genuinely looking for something good FOR THE BOYFRIEND WHO HURTS HER to come out of our friend's suffering.

O_o

Yeah that is totally backwards and strange. Until he figures out what? How not to be an abuser?

Also I don't get this: taken some legal & protective steps but hasn't made the break-up stick. Most legal and protective things I can think of would sort of either necessitate or cause a break-up, no?

Calling the police somehow turned into "he's going to court-ordered anger management therapy but I'm required to go with him, because you know how a lot of women don't press charges?" which the other two of us cannot understand and never got explained in the short window of time before the guy came back over.

Yeah, I don't understand that either. :/

I rly feel for the woman in the relationship, but I'm kind of unfairly ANGRY with the friend who said maybe it was all for a higher cause, like, because maybe she could HELP HIM. I know she didn't mean that our friend should be sacrificed to her abusive bf but it was such a WTF thing to say.

help him, how? like, does he have some other problem that makes beating his gf from time to time understandable?

That is WTF, I agree. However maybe you're also partially channeling the anger at the boyfriend at the more accessible target who happened to wind you up right after having your head filled with bad thoughts abt the asshole?

Or maybe not, I mean!

(PS this is so sad, I worry so much abt a friend I basically never talk to any more because she's not allowed to see anyone and the occasional emails all end "got to go, he's back soon and will be angry if he knows I've used the computer, got to leave it enough time to cool down" and blah, we don't even know 100% that he's physically abusive as well as emotionally and we don't know what to do)

i think i can understand a lot of reasons people don't "press charges" (is that how you do it in new york, does the victim have a choice?) or don't follow through with or cooperate with prosecutions for domestic violence. the way it's handled is really shitty for everyone and i hate it.

yeah otm. i have been thinking a lot about how shitty the existing systems for handling complaints of domestic violence and also rape are legally. sometimes i wonder if it's even possible to make them better? like there might need to be a whole new way of addressing these things. i don't even really know what i mean by that it's just so shitty for victims of abuse to then have to put up with added horribleness.

i'm really sorry this is happening to your friend, Laurel.

one of the things that started me thinking about the inadequacies of the system was this about the dominique strauss-kahn case. it's kind of hard to read, but it seems fairly otm? (nb: she is apparently a defense lawyer and i kept thinking of harbl the first time i read it.)

there is a part of me that wants all these assholes hurled in jail but it just doesn't seem to work out very well for the victims in question.

sorry, that's just her tumblr. this is the post i meant to link.

i like that but i was even thinking of something different that i think about every day. in the county i work in they are really good at acting like they want what the victim wants, until the victim doesn't want what they want, and then the patronizing but-we're-helping-you-you-just-don't-know-it-yet game gets started. imo even given situations like fear of testifying and battered woman's syndrome, making someone come to court (sometimes under threat of arrest) after they told you that they don't want to is not making it better. even fearful or battered people should have some control over the thing, and who gets to decide why they aren't interested anyway?

i think some people who do domestic violence can be changed in some circumstances. usually if they have money and education and can get into individual counseling rather than a one-size-fits-all state certified anger management class. they make people do ywca "abuser intervention programs" here and i don't know what they do there but i am skeptical of their effectiveness given the people they are dealing with. most abusers i think were exposed to violence as children and have other mental problems that are not going to be fixed so easily. also alcoholism is a big thing. should just ban alcohol.

in the county i work in they are really good at acting like they want what the victim wants, until the victim doesn't want what they want, and then the patronizing but-we're-helping-you-you-just-don't-know-it-yet game gets started. imo even given situations like fear of testifying and battered woman's syndrome, making someone come to court (sometimes under threat of arrest) after they told you that they don't want to is not making it better. even fearful or battered people should have some control over the thing, and who gets to decide why they aren't interested anyway?

yes, that all seems otm

x-post ime Harbl otm x1000

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/fashion/6651851/How-to-fix-hairy-legs-and-cankles

lol, the indignant comments after this story are so very new zealand, reading them made me homesick.

Ha

Ell #21 3:18pm
I was a feminist, but then I shaved my legs, and with each stroke of the razor I too found myself thinking "no, women don't need social equality" until finally as I gently went over my knees I thought "you're right, I do deserve an unequal wage." Bravo for defining feminism as it so often has been since the 1980s backlash and continuing to remember that no woman with a smooth leg has ever thought about our inequality.

yes <3

SKM #17 3:08pm

My best friend always teases me about not shaving my legs in winter (my thoughts - why bother?). But it's always teasing and he wouldn't dare tell me I can't leave the house without a wax job. If she hasn't asked for your advice, leave well enough alone! Lorraine, you sound like a very image-oriented friend. Are you still in high school?

ljlj #8 2:48pm
Dear Fashion Doctor, my friend dares to look different from expected norms, how do I tell her how disgusting and freakish she is for not wanting to feel shame about her body and to cover up, and that she makes me want to puke?

Dear Lorraine, I share in your horror that your friend flaunts her disgusting hairy fatness. I wish you could bring her over to my house so I could stare at her like the freak show that she is. If she's one of those 'feminists' she can't be fixed so you should end the friendship - hopefully then her grossness is because she's slovenly. If she's just not noticed how gross she is have a word to her about how horrendous her wardrobe is and tell her how to dress.

Kisses! The Fashion Doctor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NkwVFhKkDs&list=UUS4VHNKderSwD-EqIUIi79Q&index=1&feature=plcp

what is happening to me

OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THIS

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

im prepared to say he was the best looking living male at that time

hahaha i liked the wrong video

although i do believe bernard is the best looking living male, that was supposed to be a video of damon albarn

Oh come on, Damon was only about the 2nd or 3rd best looking man in his own band.

if youre insane

although i do think blur in 1996 were a fuckin joke in re how hot they all were

im v v attrated to graham and he was my favorite when i was in high school. alex is def/obv beautiful but not really my type.

also last night i had a dream that damon and graham (circa '94) asked me to store some paintings in my garage and then me and damon kissed behind a painting, i never have dreams like this

Alex circa Modern Life was possibly one of the most beautiful looking human beings who has ever lived! Good god I wish handsome were as handsome does in that man's case, though. :-(

idk why but roxy's smoochdream is making me lol
no idea what the blurs look like

otm. i cringed through his book

the smooch dream is embarrassing and teenagerish!!

yes it is very silly :3

i cant say im ashamed, ive told everyone about it, lol.

in the dream damon said "she'll just throw them out" re: the paintings. what does it mean

They are leaving their art carelessly in the hind parts of your brain, and they are afraid that you will forget their beautiful art and throw away the band's best work. Or, erm, something.

I love dreams where I get to smooch rock stars. But I am embarrassing and teenagerish.

man I'll settle for any kissing dream

I'm not embarrassed to admit I got an "omg he looks like Alex James" excitement vibe when I met my husband. I'm sad I missed all this Blur talk! I'm also sad the emo movement pushed Andrew to lose the front-swept bangs I loved so much, heh.

I would like Blur dreams. I was nuts enough for them that I am sure I have had them, but can't recall any. :( I will settle for that one time AJ winked back at me in a concert. Sigh.

OTN re hotness of 96 Blur. Damon in all those polo shirts and shaggy bowl cut, Graham in his secondhand shirts..sorry Dave, I got nothing except maybe that brief orange hair period.

ive never had any dreams about them or any other fancied rockstars

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3bx6c2CQU1r7uocgo1_r1_500.jpg

Graham I kinda got in a super-indie sort of way. But I just never ever saw the appeal of Damon. He just reminded me of some super-punchable older brother.

Besides, I got room for only one boyish, spikey-haired, art school-attending English blond in my life.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5y1s5GmAj1rsvop4o1_500.jpg

^^^^^ this one.

I can has snog-dream, pls?

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lk9setj6oH1qcilyeo1_500.gif