hey love, I'm an inconstant satellite

The previous post linked at the beginning of this one isn't bad, but this one's great. On what men think women want from women.

Exciting results from collaborators at work! Going to have to send them a lot more samples.

http://quietbabylon.com/2014/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-making/

Among other wonders, SailorPtah has made "fetch" happen. (Crossover between Night Vale and His Dark Materials.) I couldn't get the smile off my face.

Emma Watson did okay. Yeah, men in general need to step up and be better feminist allies, but it's not actually about them, and I don't think they've failed to realize that their moms are generally women. I think it's hard for men to see how fucked things still are because they don't experience it. That's what we need to fix, but it's a catch-22 in multiple ways.

1. Smut Peddler 2014 is ouuuuuuuut! ♥ I may have read some of it at work and then been physically and socially uncomfortable as a result.

2. Racing game reunion today! Got to swap gossip with some people I haven't talked to in a quite a while, though we were still missing a few. Must make time to hang out there occasionally.

3. Hair re-pinked! (Bleaching pretty patchy, though. Need much better mirror skills if I am to bleach the back of my own head.)

4. The large bookshelf is attached to the wall, because I am smart and persistent. I figured out how to put it together, which was a learning process but totally worked, and then worked out a scheme to get the new stabilizing boards screwed into drywall anchors. Didn't work the first time because my screws were too short to account for the space between the wall and the shelf, oops, so I got two other sizes today and the one I thought would work did. Small one will be easy-peasy, and then books can be unpacked.

5. I get to see rushthatspeaks and J tomorrow.

Friday:

My bus to NYC was delayed, first by traffic near Waterbury, CT, which somehow made the driver think getting off the highway to putt through small towns and part of Waterbury was a good plan, and then by some kind of accident or procession when I was almost there, which caused traffic backup and additional wrongheaded-seeming detours. But skygiants met me, and we got Thai food with her roommate before all walking down to the Film Forum for Double Indemnity, which was pretty great because: (1) Barbara Stanwyck, (2) nerd hero, (3) man/murderin' OTP, (4) chocolate egg cream. Admittedly the last could easily have applied to another movie, but it didn't.

Saturday:

The free exhibit currently at the Fashion Institute of Technology is "Exposed: a history of lingerie", which is highly worth seeing for many reasons. The most amazing individual pieces were the current student projects -- really stunning though in some cases impractical. I think if I got to pick any pieces from the entire thing to wear they'd be the absurd 60s giraffe-print bikini set and the student project like blue-and-black birds' wings, though there was also some very fine corsetry. Luckily for us, we happened to meet a lady there who told us all about an exhibit of ballgowns at another museum. Over bagels afterward it became extremely clear that we had to go to that on Sunday.

But first, another movie: Stella Maris with Mary Pickford. When I told my parents about this, they pooh-poohed the idea that anyone would NOT know all about Mary Pickford; she was married to [filed in my head under "some guy"... um...] Douglas Fairbanks! And had a ranch that my dad went to? past? when he lived in the area. Silent movies for free with live accompaniment are always good, and this one especially so, with amazing acting by Mary and an actually interesting Q&A afterward. Boy, though, the one short that they said was considered lost could remain lost. It wasn't so much a visit by the Racism Fairy as the Racism Fairy spreading herself in naked glory all over the screen, and there were other problematic elements as well.

It was a bit too late to get to the regular botanic gardens at that point, but we trotted off (through what amounted to hiking trails at times) to the Central Park Conservatory Garden, where we found a fountain commemorating Frances Hodgson Burnett. skygiants maintains that the child-nymph represented in bronze must in fact be what FHB looked like. Would statuary lie to us? The garden did some lovely and impressive things with shape, repetition, and leaf color, and also the bathroom windows are nifty openable octagons.

We did in fact feel tired at this point, despite the comparatively clement weather, so we got some very good Indian food (I hadn't had aloo paratha in so long!) and went home to fall asleep over books.

Sunday:

Brunch! Mexican restaurants are dangerous when tomatoes are a problem, but I negotiated it all right and the food was tasty.

Then, off to the Met to see the ballgowns: "Charles James: Beyond Fashion". The curators were really, really into this guy. In the main gallery, the walls were mirrored and adorned with his self-important quotations, including the original EMPHATIC CAPITALS, and the placards were frequently pretty over the top as well. Most of the clothes were intriguing-to-wonderful, though, and even when I thought he missed the boat I could generally see what he was getting at. The exhibit included robot arms holding cameras and projectors, which along with large electronic displays allowed some really intuitive and beautiful ways to display the garments and information about them. (They also allowed there to be a sign asking that you not touch the robot arms because they're fragile. Aww, little robot armses.) Apparently James started as a milliner, which you could see in his structural mindset, but they sadly didn't have any of his hats available, even in photos.

I made good time coming home, which was good because I hadn't charged my persnickety e-reader correctly. I napped some and made it back with 1% battery left on my phone!

Sunday good things:

1. Chat with J.

2. Really nice walk and yogurt in the park. Underdone mochi, silly pilgrim statue, still very pleasant.

3. Hansel and Gretel, Witch Hunters was exactly the terrible movie I wanted to watch.

Monday good things:

1. Entertaining texts distracting me from moping.

2. "Rafflesiaceae flowers are fly pollinated and mimic carrion— they lure pollinators through deceit (i.e., offer no reward), thus acting as dual parasites on their pollinators and their Tetrastigma hosts (Bänziger, 1996; Nais, 2001). " Yeah bitches, Rafflesia!

3. Dinner (with rushthatspeaks and gaudior) and a movie!

Tuesday good things:

1. Bunny sighting right by the Divinity School!

2. Soooo hot, and of course I chose this day to go into the greenhouses to collect specimens... but it was actually quite comfy in the greenhouse compared to outdoors!

3. OMG all the sleeping.

Wednesday good things:

1. Doing actual lab work! DNA preps from a kit are still kind of adventurous when everything is unfamiliar and the equipment is busted and/or mysterious.

2. Orientation to the herbarium library and getting to go hunt for a thing in the book-smelling stacks with automatic lights and beautiful old monographs.

3. Books bound with marbled paper and containing annotations in the loveliest faded ink and perfect old-style handwriting! Plus, solving a mystery that led to relabeling a book correctly!

1. Found a quarter and a dollar on my way to school this morning, totally separate incidents!

2. The first story in Fight Like a Girl is about a Deaf lesbian magical-archivist finishing grad school. I read it last night and was totally delighted, then I read it again today. It was even more awesome the second time.

3. Scheduled myself a bunch of work today and got through all of it, most with good results.

4. Pizza and movie (Paranorman: charming) with sweetie.

Minimally coherent reading meme time!

Currently I am reading Deerskin, because I read Chalice yesterday and it was Just The Thing, and I emailed rushthatspeaks saying mostly in jest that I should try Deerskin as comfort reading because comfort is unpredictable. Nope! Deerskin is predictably upsetting! Almost cried at lunch, sad all afternoon. But I read more on the couch when I got home, and there were blessings and baths and puppies, so that's better and I am looking forward to finishing it when I go to bed.

Some people do not like Chalice I guess? It's very reserved as a book, but Mirasol is reserved and so are basically all the other characters, it works for me. Plus I love bees, I would like to keep some bees someday.

Before that I read Baby Remember My Name: an anthology of queer girl writing, edited by Michelle Tea. Around halfway through, I thought to myself, so I am guessing Michelle Tea lives in San Francisco, and her solicitation for this anthology was largely based in San Francisco, because fuck is there a lot of San Francisco in this book. (Her bio proves me correct on the first supposition at least.) I was rolling my eyes pretty hard by the end. Also a lot of sex work, which, okay, I get that queer people often do that but it's mostly not people I know so to have it be overwhelming was weird. Some of the writing was too poetical for me, and most of the bits I liked cut off abruptly. Nice to see economic and racial diversity, though.

Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was amazing; I have liked her other novels pretty well, but this one blew me away and I don't want to spoil it, just go read. (I get the impression that I'm a philistine for not having this kind of reaction to Sarah Canary, but oh well.)

Also there was Robin Hobb's Blood of Dragons, which seems to be the last of the current batch of books, in which cranky-ass deformed dragons and their disadvantaged keepers trek up the world's nastiest river in search of a new home. It is a soap opera. On a scale of zero to Nana it is like 9. [*] When I mentioned it to skygiants she expressed trepidation about revisiting Robin Hobb at all, which is legit! I myself am afraid to reread the Assassin books after how fucking awful Soldier Son was! (Also I mean a person grows up, which is more the point.) But I was never emotionally attached to the Rain Wilds books, which is what these mainly relate to, so I felt myself fairly safe here. (The Tawny Man books get major side-eye from me, if that helps futher calibrate my Robin Hobb attitude for anyone?) There is a dragon in here that I think is a dragon from the Assassin books, though, which means DANGER WILL ROBINSON I might have to reread those to see what I think about that. Can it be more ill-advised than Deerskin though? And that's turning out okay in the end!

Um a while ago I read Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, which was not the thing of heart-wrenching glory that Eleanor and Park is. It is cute and fun, though. The best thing about it is that she made up a whole Harry-Potter-esque fandom for her characters to be fans of, and there are excerpts, and now people on the internets are making little comics and sketches of Simon Snow and his adversary Baz and his two friends Agatha and Penelope. If I could draw humans worth a damn I would probably be doing fan art myself, just because I am so taken with the meta of it all.

Longer ago than that I read Mirabile, which everyone should do at all times. When they're not reading Hellspark anyway.

Books I bought this last long time: Only presinks! Which somehow the clerk was surprised that I had read them both first. I said, come on, how else do you know who needs to read them? (The Fowler for Wim's dad and stepmom; Rachel Hartman's Seraphina, which is now purple and I disapprove, for my mom.)

[* ETA: wait I just realized, this is totally The Real World: Rain Wilds River. brb loling forever]

1. Got my first manuscript review request that didn't come through PI first. How overwhelming. I wonder if I'll be reviewing stomata papers for the rest of my life, or if the editors eventually catch up when a person changes specialties?

2. Talking to telophase about Japan. Upsetting, a bit, as I'm still homesick for Japan, but so nice to use my learnings.

3. Youngest cohort member defended his thesis today. Wearing a blue lab coat, white collared shirt, and bow tie. The cutest.

4. Call from Dad to arrange lunch next week. Yay. They are hardly ever up here.

5. Allie Brosh talk! Entry was a confusing disaster -- sheesh, the U Bookstore puts on events all the time and many are at this venue, so how did they botch it that badly? -- and the event started 40 minutes late. Once we got in, though, we had books to read! The new material is of course great. Allie read "The God of Cake" while projecting the newly refined illustrations; her reading started out a little flat but she warmed to it quickly, and the illustrations are even funnier blown up. Lots of good audience questions, which she fielded charmingly. (Most interestingly, she draws on paper.) I was tempted to stay and get a doodle in my book, since that was on offer and we'd wound up in an early signing group after the entry doom, but I was starving so we got delicious Thai food instead.

I read things!

Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell
Just about my only problem with this was a couple instances of language usage. (Saying whether something was a thing didn't used to be a thing.) Otherwise, adorable, handled the class and race stuff pretty well, all about the 80s music, out-of-control sweet first love from both viewpoints. Class did seem to be conflated with abuse just a little; while that's not exactly a false correlation, or even a false causation, I was uncomfortable with it. There was some surprisingly good support and solidarity toward the end, though.

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
I underestimated just how much I would like having a narrator whose native language didn't mark gender and who thus called everyone "she". It was so great. Legitimate linguistic issue! Ongoing wry struggle with gender marking in different languages and planetary cultures! I continue to have no idea what anatomy the narrator's body has, actually, but I know she wouldn't mind whatever I picked.

Anyway! She's also a former spaceship, which is 100% awesome. The structure of the book is a little confusing at times, as there's a lot of flashback and multiple bodies/identities going on, but it came together well for me at the end.

A Single Shard, Linda Sue Park
This kid's book about chosen family and pottery making in historical Korea is pretty good, and would be worth reading just for the description of the wood-fired kiln technology available at the time, because then you go look at a picture of the Thousand Cranes Vase that was made that way. I... what. Gah.

Angel in the Attic, Rebecca Tregaron
Disclaimer: the author is a friend. She wouldn't have had to be for me to want to read about a lesbian werewolf chef, though. There's an amusing variety of people, including multiple types of pretty pretty angel, and lots of food porn, and a truly over-the-top Gothic house. Did I mention that the food sounds delicious? This is the first piece of the novel, but not a cliffhanger or anything. (Except semi-literally: sex in an aerie does imply having to get down eventually.)

Special note:
Little though I like Amazon, I really like Minister Faust, so I will point out that Kindle users can currently get The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad for free. And evidently it's a Volume One now.

Currently reading: Smoketown, Tenea D. Johnson. A dystopia without birds, which has predictable effects on the ecology of insects. An artist with the ability to bring her work to life, maybe in a more sophisticated or extreme way than she thought. A religion with the belief that everything can be fixed and every object is a tool. And a couple of other threads that I'm enjoying but having trouble tracking because of my general lack of attention span. It's all lovely, though.

Recently finished: Frost Burned, Patricia Briggs. Reasonably fun, as usual; I expect I will also pick up the next one when I see it at the library. I'm annoyed that the character changed her last name upon marriage, and also that the series didn't.

Pantomime, Laura Lam. I need one of those reaction gifs for "that escalated quickly", because this was fun and amusing run-away-to-join-the-circus with bonus intersex/crossdressing angst until the murdering started up. I wasn't at all sure about the intersex person being apparently magical, with a mysterious connection to preapocalyptic artifacts, but I'm okay with it as wish-fulfillment so far. As is now infuriatingly customary, the ending is not an ending.

The Shattering, Karen Healey. The central conceit was a bit obvious, but I continue to really appreciate Healey's diverse casting and the social dynamics among the characters. There was an opportunity for more moral complexity in the magic dilemma, which I wish she'd explicated; on the other hand, I wasn't expecting the great and realistic representation of grief at the very end.

Reading next: What I really need to do is fix the e-reader's battery, because I have some great things waiting on there, including the rest of Rat Girl.