no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Aw <3 U too estela.

(Mainly hanging out on ladyartist threads on ILM.)

(And Patrick Wolf threads. Not that he is a ladyartist, but he probably fits in the remit of this thread, as in "I cannot figure out if he is attractive or not, and this deeply confuses me.")

Brett flirts like crazy, this is true - I think it greases the wheels of a certain kind of industry (and he did shag my former editor once so is not above career sex). BTW, Kate, Patrick Wolf is even taller than Brett Anderson! My friend G is in some of PW's videos - she is 6'4" - and I think he is the same size as her (I also sat next to him at an ESM dinner a couple of years ago, where I found out he recruited pen-pals from the classifieds of Select when he was a young teenager). Kate, I'll send you the (admittedly blurry) photo I took of PW at the dinner because he was dressed as the world's biggest sailor boy.

I loathe Oasis, but Liam was fantastically good-looking in 1994, when we stood next to each other at the final Richey Manic MSPs gig and I had to just deal with him actually being HOT. He was clearly tripping, because he started stroking my fake fur coat (he was wearing a black one, mine was white) and trying to have a staring competition. It was a bit like experiencing Peter O'Toole's wild-eyed NO PRISONERS thing from Lawrence of Arabia for real and thus I was left a bit conflicted and drooly.

As to Damon - guilty as Kate has charged. He's more of a pigtail-puller than Brett.

Is he taller than Simon Bookish, is what I want to know. Have never seen those two in a room together, despite Kristian's habit of surrounding himself with incredibly beautiful but unbelievably tall young men, each taller and prettier and more avante guarde than the last. (well, excepting Hilton Betelgeuse of course)

Have much trouble fancying him, mostly due to incredibly unsavoury tales told to me by a lady writer and editor of both our acquaintances... But. I certainly appreciate his styling, his outfits, his hairdoes, his endless presentation of *himself*, his body, etc. to the Gaze. The man seems a walking essay for Filament Magazine in many many ways, which I find appealing. And yet, I do not like his nose, I find something ... sulky? sullen? schoolboyish in a bad way? about his face which stops me from actually finding him *attractive* though I can certainly admit that he is handsome (or pretty, or photogenic, or whatever)

Thing is, I like him as *pop star* and certainly appreciate his musical output, but I like him as an untouchable archetypical figure, not someone who is too intimately connected to a world I used to inhabit. That makes me uncomfortable, but I suppose it's unavoidable in London. It's complicated.

to story about the fur coat is killing me

Have you guys read www.xojane.com yet? It's Jane Pratt's new website. I'm sort of undecided but will probably check it out once in a while. As annoying as she can be, I can't help but sort of love her.

yeah im with you, ill probably dislike it but im sure ill read it anyway. lol

Incoming message from Janet Privacy Control:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh_gaaUiNs8

do we need to talk? i feel like there's something going on.
i won't be so bold to say that i know it's going on; i just feel something strange in the air.
around here. lately.

The Kate thing?

Well, there have been other things. Abbott's departure. Clearly people miss her.

Also the Kate thing, which seemed to be really like majorly OTT in a way I'm not sure I understand.

It's not really understandable without knowing Kate, I suspect. Def came out of nowhere w/r/t the whole ilx wimmens attacks.

I believe Abbots left for oth reasons, not sure but it coincided with some trigger stuff coming up on-board, I think.

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.