In 1998, the internet was new, and talk shows were the precursor of reality television. This "transcript" of one such show was posted on a listserv that year. The satirical elements---the judgmental captions imposed over the guest's images, coupled with the hosts' postmodern willingness to assume that each of their guest's [bizarre] values were as good as another's---were a dead-on critique of every major player in the talk show genre, while also poking fun at those deadly ironic college students who watched---or "studied"---talk shows in between reading the texts being named-dropped. I hadn't read any of them, and I don't think anyone has ever read them all, but I knew enough to laugh. My friend Sasha was the real target audience, and I admired Sasha, who sent them to me. I forwarded them to my similarly smart and funny friends by email, then lovingly formatted the joke in HTML using Notepad, and uploaded it to my GeoCities website. I've had the HTML for the old site on every hard drive I've owned, since. Someday soon it will go into a cloud, when I give up on hard drives altogether.( Read more... )

Fanfic writers, bloggers, and other members of the internet gift economy: we salute you.

Naturally, an awful lot of what’s being made is weird porn. Yes, there are many fanfics that are silly jokes, or character studies, or casefic, or otherwise not porn. There’s also universes of D/s, mpreg, knotting, and (for one-stop shopping) porn-oriented AUs like the Alpha/Omegaverse, in which the way MRAs perceive masculinity becomes literally true and a lot gayer. This is why, when Gail Dines argues that the internet has made men addicted to porn, and influenced men’s sexual fetishes until they make perverse demands on women, who themselves never enjoy porn and thus are free of sexual fetishes, I laugh until I can’t breathe.

That's the GMP's EIC, Noah Brand, also of Seriously, What About Teh Menz? [Edited 5/8 to add the link: here, in a piece on the GMP entitled, "Why I Love Weird Porn"]

Alison Bechdel's interview about her new book, Are You My Mother? focuses on her mother, and that relationship. She says that she grew up without her mother's love. And that she's in psychoanalysis now, and that she got the idea to ask her mother what the first thing was that she had learned from her mother. And that her mother doesn't seek out information about her, and that she presumes her mother doesn't read interviews with Alison Bechdel.

I haven't talked to my mother in years. When I imagine asking her this, though, I know what the answer is, because it is something I have been thinking about lately. Bechdel is dismantling her mother, in the psychological sense. I may be doing the same thing.

My mother might have learned from her mother to keep her father happy. That is what I think she would have learned: that it was important. Similar to the message that Bechdel got from her mother, about her mother's mother and the values handed down.

I haven't written here in days. Let me see what I remember.

Earlier this week, there was a patch where I started figuring out that items I've completed and can see written down with a line through them are more satisfying. I might have to stroke myself just as much as it takes to format my to-do items with a strikethrough after I do them, and not delete them til some later point, because I need to see stacks of things that are done, not for them to fall off the earth like being a cashier or counting sheep.

Been up and down, frankly. This morning started with terrible back pain. Just one side, feels intracostal mostly but maybe also the erectors. Took the max dose of ibuprofen, walked the dog, meditated. I'm doing a standing meditation that Jason calls four gates breathing, about ten minutes at a time, at least a couple times a day. It's doing me a lot of good. Left side proprioception is still not great but at times I have it and it's great. More of that, please.

I described a glimmer of consciousness before dissociation in conditions that would usually freak me right the fuck out, and how it immediately precedes the dissociation I was just congratulating myself for having somehow avoided, in that moment in which (I think) I'm present. Jason says I can expand that moment. He says slower is faster. He says a lot of crazy shit that I take on faith except when I haven't got any.

This week I will see Lee on Thursday, after I see Jason, and he will treat me for demon possession with his acupuncture needles. I've been anticipating this for about a month, now.

I've gotten a lot of writing done, and cooking and editing, too. Even cleaning a little. Everything goes on one to-do list and that works better than multiple lists. This weekend I have a deadline to write to for the NYT contest, and something in to an editor, and been editing, myself. I was able to answer a friend who asked me what I'm doing in my career right now, to say I'm writing for more markets and planning an e-book. I had a meeting last week with someone who wants to write for the GMP and who I can probably write for, too, who works in reproductive choice with churches. I'm not making any money yet, but I just bought $50 worth of my friends' books. Karma.

I'm going to go make some food now. Later, if I care, I will go through my calendar and try to draw in my last ten or so days.

I just had a really wonderful conversation on Chatroulette. I have a feeling I shouldn't take it for granted that this can happen every time.

( long, so under a cut tag. you're welcome. )

Jason has talked about mentoring, and I really have taken it to heart. I am sure I wouldn't have taken it to heart if I didn't need to mentor. This is what it's good for. Can I do this a bunch more times?

Figuring out weekends again. Last weekend was so hard, we could not possibly do it again. This morning I was waiting for it to happen: for one of us to get triggered. It was me. And like last weekend, I was sad and dissociated for much of the day. Last weekend, I was sad on Saturday and Kevin weathered me, then Sunday we went apeshit bananas off the rails insane. And then again on Tuesday. So I'm still cautious about tomorrow. Leery. I've got Shabbat patterns layered over weekends being just weekends: too much time, not enough care. I want to prepare even more for weekends than we have done this time, though we have done a lot. We're working on the house, making spaces for ourselves to work, be alone, be crazy.

Part of the pattern of the week is getting more creative time toward the end of the week, and getting things written, and I have done that in spades this week. I finally figured out Storify and linked together a bunch of essays I've written about body image and mothers and grief, breastfeeding, my trans self, me and my trauma-baby, ferocious mama friends. There's one more story I'm going to add to it when it's published tomorrow on the GMP, about my grandmother. Then I'm going to do another one about food, maybe.

Good Jew is about a bad Jew who becomes a good one. I was a good Jew, but lately, I've been a bad one.

I miss Shabbat.

A kind of privacy I miss: to sing as loud as I like. I used to do this in the car.

Life in the Undergrowth

4 out of 5 stars
Attenborough's pithy narration and reassuring demeanor are wedded to the most remarkable footage of life in its simplest animal forms, as it first creeps onto land. I hate bugs: I really do. The whole time I watched these documentaries and anything creepy was on the screen, I kept twitching and scratching. But I've always loved biology, and Attenborough kept showing things we could never before see in nature documentary. I continue to watch. The most bewitching footage can be found in the very first episode. Two leopard slugs mate in a dance that is beautiful, miraculous, and frankly erotic. In fact, watching hours of footage of animals that spend most of their lives flying, eating, sleeping, self-improvement, and reproducing, I wonder what I would have to do in this life for the privilege of returning to this world as a leopard slug.

The Jazz Singer

2 out of 5 stars
Neil Diamond makes this worth watching, but only barely. A boy from the shtetl (played by Eldridge Street in Manhattan) makes it big in Hollywood as a singer-songwriter, but his family doesn't support him. How will he reconcile his love for singing jazz (played in this version by "disco") with love for his family? The answer may surprise you. The romantic scenes in between will almost surely make you queasy, and you would be forgiven by this reviewer for skipping those scenes altogether: suffice it to say that both a bicycle built for two, and a truly majestic expanse of chest hair are featured. In his role as the only believably cast Jew, aside from the Hasids in the opening credits, Diamond's "Kol Nidre" is the musical and emotional climax. After this, his shirts get shinier, but the songs don't get better. Horribly overplaying his father is Sir Lawrence Olivier, looking very Polish and goyishe as a fourth generation cantor.

A month before my nineteenth birthday, I gave birth. My husband and I were young, poor, stupid, and enthusiastic. That’s probably not such a kind encapsulation, but I’m 37 now, and when I see people that age now I think, Children. My son is now the age I was when I gave birth. I shake my head in wonder or disgust, knowing full well how young couples end up with kids, even though we all went through the same health classes. Our animal natures will somehow overcome the intellectual arguments for caution. If it weren’t for young fools in love, most of us wouldn’t be here.( more of my story behind the cut... long, on childbirth and breastfeeding )