the strangest alchemy

Not sure if this came out cropped well. Hope so. The innuendo is just awesome.

This has officially made my day.

4:17 of this just has me guffawing:

Hmm, so now we know why Starscream is so damn jealous of Megatron: A secret gay robo-crush! (Well, Megs does have a really big fusion cannon... ahahahhahaha)

And here I thought that show predated fanservice, glomping, and squeeing fangirls who slash...

If you need me I'll be over here on the floor DYING OF LOL.

Can someone define this term for me? I see it tossed around a lot in feminist and other circles, where it describes a certain kind of arrogant attitude that privileged people are supposed to have. But what exactly is the attitude?

I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm just trying to nail down what it means. "Male entitlement" usually seems, in feminist circles, to refer to a belief that the Universe will somehow provide women (this is usually said about hetero men), and then for the sole purpose of the sexual pleasure of the man. 

And yeah, I don't want to say this doesn't exist. Some people's shock at "No," whether it's "No, I'd rather not dance" or "No, I'd rather not fuck" takes me truly aback.

But the thing is, what are we saying they really think?

Is it "she will say yes to sex, regardless of where we are?" Is it "we're in a bar, so therefore she'll say yes, because I've been taught that only 'sluts' would be here?" Is it "I have a right to overreact to her 'No,' and have people comfort me?" Is it "If she refuses me, some other woman owes me a pity fuck because I'm 'entitled' to sex with someone?"

It's often worded as "entitled to women's bodies," which always leads to the mental image for me of some guy walking over to some closet or secret stash or tree wherein lie warm and alive bodies with no consciousness. But we're not in a sci-fi movie here (haha should I write that next? "The Meat Locker?"), so what's he really imagining? Is he assuming everyone will say Yes automatically?

I've never quite puzzled it out, which makes it hard to understand just what people are supposedly saying happens when they claim that media or porn or whatever else fosters or props up feelings of "entitlement."

And now for something completely different and fucking amazing:

The Ecstasy of St. Theresa tattoo

I'll be in my bunk.

I should never again bother to read any comment thread anywhere that contains the words "annoyingly third-wave feminists."

I... gah. I just get so sick of "I'm smart; you're annoying."

Over on SM-F I had the revelation that it's, well, basically high school all over again. "I don't like those kinds of girls! They're frivolous and slutty and you know what else? They don't read!"

Where "don't read" means something like "only read Intercourse once, and don't remember the scintillating brilliance that was Chapter Three. If they did, they would be inexorably drawn to the perfectly argued conclusion."

Meh. So so so tired of "it was a bad book and I can't believe anyone thinks it's well-argued" being devo-rayed into "that annoying, ignorant kind" by people who would rather not fight the battle of wits on even ground.

I'm re-reading Milton's Paradise Lost.

Not sure how long it'll take me to re-finish it, but damn if it isn't good. I'd forgotten how awesome it is. :D

In other news, I just read (for the first time, I mean) Clive Barker's Books of Blood, which are also really spiffy. Though I have my usual impression of Barker here too: that when he's on, he's on, but when he isn't it's just weird in a not-so-memorable way.

For all that most people seem to think Thornography is an awful album, I really like it.

It's not as High Art-y or as memorable or as unique as most of Cradle's other albums, no, but it's fun for rocking out.

\m/ >.< \m/

Also, this little duet verse in Under Huntress Moon just plain gets me in the gonads:

Be it sun to your moon
Be it moon to your sun
Together we promised to come
With a turn of the screw
And a slip of the tongue
We eclipsed one another undone

I hate humans today.

Since when does the truth about somebody depend on what you "flow with?" And since when does someone's gender depend on whether or not you find her annoying?

Yeesh. I love several people in the HR fandom absolutely dearly, but the bad eggs... fuck it. Weren't we supposed to be... discussing movies?

It's interesting to me now that I've been reading Clive Barker's Books of Blood/getting into horror/etc. that today when I saw my cousins' kids, they wanted me to swing them high on the hammock because they wanted to be frightened. They told me about roller coasters they'd been on and how it had frightened them, with great relish.

I really do think there's something to poking at the frightening bits of life and seeing what happens. I was raised to think one should never do that, and I remember the few times I let myself do it being secret and savory treats. Then of course I ended up a sadomasochist. :)

It's interesting though too that now that I'm writing and reading things that are not only fantastic but dark, I seem to want SM less. I hope it doesn't tarnish (polish? ha) my reputation that a lot of my fantasies lately have been fairly vanilla and snuggly. Since I rarely get to see Monkey anywhere but the club, the thought of lazy days in cuddling under the covers feels more exotic than whipping right now... :-P

And I think the dark stories, lately, are feeding that hunger in me anyway. They can get weirder, bloodier, more fantastic. But it's just, I think, for me, a transmutation of the same basic desires.

http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?topicid=57&image=0

It's the hypocrisy that gets me. Not the sex.

For a while now, I've been saying that the only anti-pornography feminist book that I find to be truly well-argued is Pornography Embodied by Joan Mason-Grant. While I do not agree with her anti-porn conclusions, I feel that she takes the usual concept of "men having a Pavlovian response to porn, oh no!" and does a fantastic job of actually turning it into something worth considering. And of arguing without hatred and disgust for her position.

(Though my point isn't to talk about her book, here's a brief discussion: Basically, she talks about how the way our bodies interact with the world shapes who we are. Part of that is how we experience and are driven by our sexual bodies, and how we experience sexual desire and need as immediate and important. From there, she argues that how we respond to that bodily experience shapes how we have it in the future. Therefore if pornography is sexist or violent (and she argues that it is), this can find its way in to desires we experience as immediate and natural and bodily. That's different from, say, reading a book or essay, because we do not have the same level of bodily engagement. We're doing something cerebral, thoughtful. But when we masturbate, we engage our bodily experience of the world to a different degree.)

So reading today that she died is weird to me. I used her book in a lot of essays and such because while I disagreed, I thought that her whole understanding of how our lives are bodily as well as mental was brilliant and worth serious consideration. Hearing that she's gone now is oddly sad. It's like hearing about someone else on the debate team who always took the other position suddenly dropping dead, and feeling a strange camaraderie. Always arguing, if it's not a violent and nasty argument, can be its own kind of bond.

So this makes me quite sad.

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…” - an Iranian blogger

I hope to heaven that what I fear will happen will not.

I have a question for folks. I often hear, whenever there's a big fracas here about some politician who has an affair, that that kind of thing is just not a big deal in other countries.

And I wonder what exactly that means. You all should know that I'm not at all socially conservative, so I really don't give a fuck whether someone has two or more partners, and I'm in a relationship with a large age difference, so I really don't think that in all such relationships, someone is taking advantage.

But I do care, and care a lot, about lying. It's a pet peeve of mine when people don't have the balls to negotiate with their partners, and do something that would be hurtful to them behind their back because oh, actually talking? That's scary. Much less having the balls to, you know, actually divorce if something's really wrong. "That would be scary and upsetting, so I'll just lie" is cowardly bullshit.

And it's worse cowardly bullshit when you're the kind of conservative who rails against other people doing it.

So I want to ask the non-USians: when folks say "people having affairs is just not a big deal over here, you weird USians," do you mean that you don't care about the lying? Or do you mean it's actually most likely negotiated polyamory that it's not socially acceptable to call that, but everyone knows it so no one cares?

Because if it's not caring about the lying, I'm having a hard time parsing that.

Can anyone confirm this to any degree?

This time, everybody decided to vote to change Ahmadinejad. But when he didn't have the votes [that his supporters in the government] were looking for, they had a coup d'état. Friday night, there were attacks to the principal headquarters of Mousavi. People working there were attacked and injured. They destroyed the systems: the faxes, computers, telephones, everything -- all the means of communication. And when Mousavi was informed after counting the votes that he had the majority, the army commanders went to him and announced the coup d'état to him. He didn't accept it and said that people would be going to the streets.

We're pretty much in the Land of the Not Confirmable, but has anyone seen reports of this from others? Or anything that might confirm it? It sounds believable to me, but I've not heard it other places. Has anyone else?

Thank you to all of you who are posting about Iran.

To the rest of you: where are you? I hate to be obnoxious, but I peek at my friends' blogs and journals and see all this "and yeah Melanie and I had a tiff on Facebook and OMG" kind of things, and I just... wow.

Think about what's important, please.

Just because it probably is, yes, wisest for Obama not to say much doesn't mean you should jabber on like nothing's happening.

The people over there want their voices to be respected and are being impressively nonviolent about it all.

Where's our respect for them?

Andrew Sullivan, blogging on the situation

i don't always like him but his blogging on this is amazing

Unsent Letter:

Yes, I like some horror movies.

No, not everyone does. I know you don't, and have exactly zero issues with that.

Yes, I'm perfectly willing not to talk about them with you if it grosses you out, upsets you, or bothers you.

But for flying fuck's sake, if you want to tell me "please don't talk about the specifics of that very violent scene where I can hear it, as it bothers me," there is a polite way to do this and an impolite way.

The polite way would be something like, "Wow, I don't mean to interrupt your conversation with someone else, but that sounds really violent. May I please ask that you don't talk about the specifics of that scene while I am here?"

To which I would have said "I'm sorry. I wasn't meaning to be lurid, I was meaning to discuss the point of the scene. There's really no need for me to mention the details, so I won't do that while you're here."

"Wow, you know that I can't hear that stuff! You need to not talk about it while I'm here! GAHHHH!" is not the polite way.

Especially not when, when my eyes widen, you then go "OH FINE. I GUESS I'LL WALK AWAY SO I CAN'T HEAR IT THEN!" in a huff.

Really, is basic courtesy too much to ask? I honestly don't think the phrase "when they cut off his hand and covered him in bees" would induce the kind of involuntary freakout that would excuse the rude way you asked me not to mention it. 

I honestly thought that one sentence like that would not be enough to deeply disturb you. I'm sorry I misjudged what would cross your line, but I really think you were rude to me.

This is pretty awesome. I really hope a DVD happens, though I fear not.

I actually have not (yet) seen the film, but I have read the novel, and I hear that a lot of the changes to the film were really not faithful to it and generally stupid. The consensus is that this made the film bad when it could have been really good. So I'd definitely like to see what the original was supposed to have been.

KRXQ Hosts Rob Williams and Arnie States Apologize for Dehumanizing and Defamatory Comments Advocating Child Abuse of Transgender Children

I listened to the whole two hours of it and I was very impressed. I could be naive, but it really sounded like they'd re-thought what they were doing and saying and that makes me thrilled.