sidravitale

One of my students (I teach a one-semester course on legal research & writing each fall) and I were chatting about study techniques for final exams, and she said something about index cards, and being able to see headers of her outlines, and I thought, Christ, she needs Scrivener. So I told her about it on condition she didn't go and download it while studying for these exams because there wasn't enough time for the learning curve and I didn't want her distracted. So, it'll be interesting to see what she has to say about it for studying, if she starts using it next semester.

I outed myself as bi without trying much the other day and got chastised for not having told this (gay) friend earlier.

I'm annoyed by this response, since my policy is pretty much, unless I'm asking you to sleep with me, my orientation isn't any of your business and continues to not be an important part of my identity. I recognize that I'm also annoyed because the exchange reminded me too much of my former boss verbally armtwisting me until I caved and told him. Which, as time passes, I get more angry about, not less.

My dead alter ego, the International Electrophobe (host of a very sporadic epistolary tale that I am, frankly, not a good enough writer to tell yet) on Tumblr and my non-Internet-enabled twin and I have been admitted to the Birthday Unending.

Reading the welcome actually made me cry a little, because my twin and I don't get to see each other very often anymore, as I'm hunched over the Atlantic Ocean and he's perched over the Pacific, and there's this vast continent between us, so that to offer us two seats at the same table (pretend or real) is a huge deal for me.

So, thanks Seanan.


Sidra

I was watching a snippet of a film wherein Dad is saying good-bye to his son, and tells his son he's too young for women now, but someday, he'll meet someone, and when he does, he must treat her like a princess, because that's what she is.

And I thought, yes, we are all princesses. Yes, yes we are.

For when I ride into battle a great force rides at my back, spears bristling, and the sun itself is fearful of the sharp gleam of my breastplate, the sharper edge of my sword, and my opponents shake in terror at my approach, for none shall stand against me and live.

Graphic novel. I got the chance to read this through my netgalley.com subscription, and I'm so glad I did. It's a fascinating premise by Max Brooks (World War Z), even for those who aren't huge fans of zombie stories (like me). The zombies aren't really the point, or at least not so far. What is, is the threat to the way of life of vampires. Equally fascinating (and quite logical) that the main characters, as vampires, live in the developing world or elsewhere where there is sufficient room to fake papers and never seem to age. A very nice change from the traditional European motif.

Well-written and lovely art.

I didn't even make it more than 5 or 6 'celebs who are gay' into some tell-all slideshow before spotting two that are more properly described as bisexual. If you're breathlessly telling us that before so-n-so dated him, she dated *her*, maybe 'gay' is not the right word to be using.

Keeeeee-RIST.

I tweeted a while ago to @EverdaySexism about getting hit on and the guy not taking no for an answer (escalating to a proposal of marriage, a promise to cook dinner for me, and that he knew how to "treat a woman right" - the tone clearly encompassed "in bed" - in that order).

So, two men respond to my tweet (I didn't notice this until much later) in the "maybe it was a misunderstanding, it's not wrong for a guy to ask you out, is it?" type vein, which is just another way of telling me not to be so uptight. Which makes the interaction MY fault, and conveniently lets these men ignore any possible culpability or responsibility to change on THEIR part.

So, I respond this past week about the escalating to a marriage proposal part. This is Twitter, there's not room for me to say more. (Instead of accepting 'no', my self-proclaimed suitor escalated, basically, nagging me to get me to break down and say yes, or at least validate his value as a potential date/suitor/etc. Common tactic. We get it all the time, woman says 'no', man doesn't take her seriously because HE wants her. Her wants aren't part of the equation.)

I don't know why I bothered responding in the first place except I thought I was potentially dealing with an ally. I wasn't really thinking it through.

What do I get in response? "Well, if a guy asks you to marry him after you turn him down for a date, that's not sexism, that's insanity." Which, again, pushes any possible responsibility for accepting a woman's 'no' off men's shoulders, by marking the behavior I criticize as outlying or "insane" so as to avoid having to examine it and accept that this kind of nagging or escalation IS a common tactic that needs to stop. It's not like the proposal was sincere, the guy just didn't pay attention to my 'no'. It's the escalation, not the fact that the escalation included a cutesy proposal of marriage. That behavior IS definitely sexist.

No means no. In fact, unless there is a clear 'yes', any non-no, silence, polite disengaged smile, etc., ALSO means no.

Oh, this is a fascinating book, laying out the evolution over time in the course of multiple gospels (each written later and later from the events they described) of the rhetoric used in deflecting blame for the Crucifixion from Rome to Jews in a region suffering from a Jewish rebellion against Rome, where there were political reasons for wanting such deflection, and the concurrent development of the idea of 'satan', of Hebrew origin, from an angel placed by God as an obstacle to someone, to an adversary of God's.

Genuinely fascinating. I really like Elaine Pagels' writing, I felt the same way about her book _The Gnostic Gospels_, which I read a few years ago.

Now, I'm not a scholar of Christianity, so I don't know how much about the timeline of writing the gospels is taught to the typical Christian, but I had always assumed that the gospels were stories of people with first-person experience, so I tend to be astounded over the fact that that isn't true.

I'm not done yet, but I just had to stop and write about it anyway.

I just HAD to stop and download Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack album on iTunes yesterday. I dunno why.

But apparently Flash's Theme frightens the Guest Chihuahua, so I can't play it when she's visiting.