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I was totally going to post this yesterday and do a sad little Music Monday. I failed. If someone wants to know what I’m listening to: Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin. (That’s a Grooveshark link. Youtube link is here.) It’s an old song that I’m listening to because of a conversation that happened as a result of the Superbowl Ad (Super Bowl?). I adore scratchy voices so I’m not even caring what she’s singing, I’m just loving the sound of her voice. I also love that she’s a woman. That sounds weird. Lemme ‘splain. I listen to a lot of men in music and lately I’ve been noticing how much of our world view, our societal point of view is created by men. So I’ve been trying to consciously pick female points of view. Which has been interesting. I think a lot about women in society and how most bigotry is systemic. I spend a lot of time reading meta type blogs. I read a lot of blogs by some very perceptive people who are really good at noticing systemic bigotry. I’m not, so it makes me grateful for the blogs that these people write. Because I’m good at finding myself uneasy, but not noticing or understanding why, but these people are. But in consciously picking my world view influences, I’m noticing something. The male point of view is comfortable. Male voices and turns of phrase and perspectives are all more normative. Female voices and turns of phrase and perspectives feel different. I can’t tell if this difference is purely because as a society everything IS from the male perspective or if it’s a personal issue. Maybe it’s because I AM female. I’d love to try this experiment out on a guy. Pick books, movies, music and articles produced by women and see if the world feels a bit more uncomfortable to them or if it feels more comfortable. There was (yet another) article from some online magazine/journal/newspaper about how romance novels are pretty shitty and shouldn’t be used as any kind of real life …standard. Plenty of people jumped all over the article, especially because the author of said article admitted IN the article to not reading romance novels. My favorite kinds of snobs are those that are snobbish over things they’ve never experienced. So someone posed a question after reading the article; If you assume that romance novels really are just women’s fantasies, why are men’s fantasies on Super Bowl commercials while women’s fantasies are considered something to be dismissed/talked down/laughed off? We don’t take things that women like or think about seriously. We don’t let women’s fantasies have the same legitimacy as men’s. What if we can’t even recognize what it would look like if female fantasies WERE considered normative and were on Super Bowl commercials? What if part of the discomfort I feel is because the women produced media is being produced by women in a male tinted culture? I dunno. I’m not even sure how much longer I can keep up my experiment. There’s not enough stuff produced by women, even if it’s meant for men. (Linda, the title of the post is from the song Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin. It cracks me up. It’s not meant to be a commentary on the content of the post. AT ALL.) (ETA: If you didn’t get what I meant about women in a male tinted world, to wit: http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/nora-roberts-rwa-readers-reading-and-jezebel-so-many-links/#139724 Specifically “a teacher at his school came up to him and asked if he was the kid whose mother wrote “trashy romance novels.” I think my mouth dropped open. I asked him what he said. He looked at me and said, “I told her no. You write Superromances.” LOL. So, suck it, random teacher implying I write crap…to my kid.” Jeepers people.) I’ve been meaning to do this for a little while. I figure 2010 was a huge year, so it took me a whole month to review it. That seems fair to me. Remind me if I forgot anything. Linda, considering how much of November I remember (damn that rhymes), I might be persuaded to do the blogging thing again. January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
We inherited some gorgeous and old peony plants when we bought our house. The one in the back is so large and crowded that the plants fall to the ground. I realized this weekend I needed to fix this, but pretty metal stakes with the loops at the top are expensive! So I thought and thought about what to do to get the flowers off the ground. Twisty ties are too short. String will cut into the stems. Anything else costs money. Then BAM: ribbon is as long as you need it and the wideness prevents it from being sharp on the plant. Yesterday I was at home and thought to tie up the plant. Except I don’t have any ribbon. I wandered around the house. Cut a pair of jeans to make shorts. Did some errands. Wandered around some more looking for nonexistent ribbon some more. Finally thought… I bet I can cut up something else to make ribbon! So I took the jean legs from earlier and drew a spiral down the leg. Then I started cutting along the line. RIBBON! (Well, not really, but good enough for government work.) The next part of this process was to find a stick I could use to hold the plant upright. Even if I tied the whole plant, I didn’t want it to be TIGHT, I just wanted the plant gathered loosely. But most of the stems were leaning towards the northeast (in the first picture, see how most of the stems are leaning towards the photographer?). That meant the whole plant would lean to the northeast. Then I tied the jeans around the base of the stems. And stuck the stick/stake inside the loop to hold the plant upright! It’s not as pretty as I imagined it would be (with a pretty pink ribbon to match the peonies), but not bad for a Monday. |
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