Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

So, I'm reading this book called Mockymen. It's not a good book. Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that the author took all that writing advice about showing, not telling, and decided it was so much crap. Let's also leave aside the fact that it appears to have plot enough for several unrelated novels, all jammed together in one short book (this feat largely being accomplished by taking out all the motivation and most of the transition between plot points).

Aside from that stuff, what I don't like about this book is that the main character (so far) is female, and the (apparently male) author has decided that it will make her a more realistic female character if she thinks about having a baby, and when would be the right time to have a baby, and why she and her partner haven't had a baby, and so on, about once every three pages.

Now, as you might be aware if you know me, or even if you read my journal regularly, I gave up trying to be female when I realized that a) it was sort of a crap game, and b) I was never going to be any good at it anyway. So I'm willing to believe that it's possible that women really do constantly think about having babies, and that's normal for the population. Therefore, I'm seeking further data. If you're a female-type person with female-type biology (or you used to be and/or used to have same), please enlighten me by making the clicky on the poll, below.

[Poll #1095206]

Saturday night, after seeing Zumanity, kittenpants and I went to Nine Fine Irishmen, which is an Irish pub in New York New York. They had a pretty solid pub band, extremely tasty food, and cute waitresses in itty-bitty tartan mini-skirts. Good times all around.

And we were in a drinking sort of town, so we were drinking. When the waitress came round for drinks orders, kittenpants orders a martini cocktail (served in a martini glass) that is composed of Bailey's, Kahlua, vanilla vodka, and butterscotch schnapps. I have noticed that they also have a pretty solid selection of Irish whiskeys (and no whiskys at all, so bonus points for that), and so I order a Black Bush, neat. As the waitress is walking away, kittenpants says, "Well, now she knows who's the butch and who's the femme in this arrangement..."

What makes this particularly funny is that on Saturday night, two time zones east of us, triadruid, allegedly the most masculine of our household, was in another Irish pub, drinking practically the same girly-girl drink as kittenpants. I love that.

The number of things that I do not need to acquire in order to go to DragonCon is staggering. Even if I try to talk myself into some of them. For instance, ponytail falls. Seriously. I could make that. With dreadlocks and machine parts and shiny copper wire, even. Maybe next year.

I keep thinking of doing a wind-up doll costume. Maybe next year. Surely I could justify ponytail falls for that. And perhaps petticoats. (Yes, my tendency to Dress Like A Girl does increase as Con approaches. At any other time of the year, anyone who suggested I should dress like a wind-up doll would likely have to exit, stage left, with a broken nose within about thirty seconds. This probably doesn't bear a lot of analysis.)

Also, the power of procrastination is amazing. In the pursuit of avoiding doing anything like sewing on the Promethea costume, I made the shoulder pin for the outfit and picked out the wig I want. I've been avoiding these tasks for some days now, apparently waiting until there was something that I needed to do, that I wanted to do less than them. Rock. So I'm guessing I'll get the skirt made about the time that the toilet needs cleaning.

To His Grace, Darren H., Duke of Parma:

We received your missive yesterday afternoon with much joy and gratitude and are looking forward to the day when we might employ the information contained. Please accept our thanks and the highest compliments of our meager court. The Baron is fortunate indeed to have such an able and honourable fellow as yourself in his employ.

With warmest regard,
featherynscale
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I intended to make up a grand flourishing name for myself in the above note, but my brain doesn't seem to have any gender-neutral titles in it other than Dr. and Rev., and neither of those seem appropriate for the circumstances. The grand flourishing name does not work without a title. Curse you, European history.
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Election day was so unreal to me yesterday that I didn't even check the results until this morning, and I am, as a rule, a compulsive election clicker. As it turns out, our guy will not be the next Mayor, which is sort of a bummer, but I figure the other guy is okay too. They were the two best of a weird lot. And, they didn't vote back in the local rep who keeps getting indicted for fraud and then claiming that she wasn't aware she was defrauding people. So that's something.
EDIT: Or not. The paper is calling the mayoral race opposite to what I read from the election board this morning. So who can say, really?
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Lois McMaster Bujold, although initially very compelling to me, has fallen off of my list of authors to be excited about new releases from. I just finished the first volume of her new series, and I'm disappointed. You sold me a romance, lady! Not that it wasn't a well-written romance, as these things go, but still. I'm looking for great, world-altering drama, and the biggest challenges Our Heros faced was a one-shot monster and a bunch of farmboys who try to run off a foreign suitor. Booooo-rrring.
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Tonight I have no meetings to attend, no classes to teach, no particular obligations. (Well, I have to be around to take a phone call, but that's it.) Holy crap, people, I might get some laundry done.

Pardon my postiness for a moment. This is an update to a previous post, in which I wrote a note to a polling agency about their craptacular misuse of the word 'transgendered', and other assorted effed-up gender assumptions.

I wanted to mention that I just took another poll written by the same company, and noticed that they have broken 'transgendered' out of the available choices on sexual orientation, and made it its own demographic item. So you don't have to choose, for example, whether you are, say, bisexual *or* transgendered, but could, in fact be recorded as bisexual *and* transgendered. (You still have to check 'male' or 'female' in another item, but hey. Baby steps.) I'm going to take a moment and revel in the possibility that someone might have read my letter and done some research. You know, since they're a *research company*.

After reading some pretty intense stuff on the flist about people's pornography addictions and the other associated evils of porn today, I am left with a single stupid question that is completely out of place in the original thread:

Why doesn't anybody ever complain that porn objectifies/degrades/devalues men? (I mean, provided that there are men in the porn. Obviously, lesbian porn doesn't objectify men, but, you know.)

(Also, can you tell it's a slow day? I can.)

So to take a break from the sheer unreasonableness at the office, I walk down the street to the little burger-and-fries cafe that I lunch at a lot. The owner and I chat a bit, then she says to me, "Does your brother come in here?".

I say, "No."

She replies, "Well, then you could pass for your brother."

I say, "That's a neat trick, because I don't have one."

So either I sometimes seem to be a male-type person when I come in, or there's some other poor bastard in Northtown who looks like me. I'd like to believe that it's the former, because it spares the other hypothetical poor bastard some pain, but I know that the best I can do on that score is that when I'm wrapped in 30 pounds of greatkilt, I can pass at 30 feet. So whoever you are, man, I'm sorry.

EDIT: Regrettably, I did not think to ask whether he had a tongue ring.

Boy in a dress barred from prom.

The really good bit about this one is that they had let him go to school dressed as a woman all year. What, suddenly at prom it's not okay, when it's okay in the classroom? People are so full of weird.

Or at least, I do. You guys can or not, at your option. This is a Campari ad with some lovely genderfuckery, courtesy of the verray sexay adammaker. Squee!

Let me join today's parade of the disaffected just for a little bit here.

I'm playing the game right now of preparing to be laid off. Some time between this Friday and the end of May, I'll be out of a job. Nobody will tell me when. So I'm trying to get ready to go at any moment.

Part of that is the old spiffing-up-the-resume, prepping-for-the-interviews dance. It's come to my attention recently that all the sharp interview clothes I used to have either have fallen apart, or no longer fit, or are so out of style as to be laughable (which I only care about in the context of interviewing; in order to present the appearance of good corporate drone, one must also present the appearance of good consumer).

So triadruid went with me on Saturday to buy a new interview suit. Sadly, the trip was fruitless, as apparently no matter how much weight I put on, I will still always be several sizes larger on the top than I am on the bottom. I tried on outfit after outfit, only to find that the pants were too big and the jackets were too small. Apparently, if I wish to have professional-looking clothes, I will have to either buy them very very large and have them tailored down to fit, or make friends with someone with similar tastes in clothing who is significantly larger in the bottom half than the top half and trade.
( Cut for gender issues, which I understand are not interesting to anyone but me. )