Roads to Safe Places

... with some borders, for a change. Our kitchen is an example of why no one ought to shop hungry at the moment.

Not that I mind. Nom.



( Read more... )

I found this article today and it looks interesting. I 'm storing it on here because the uni PCs won't let me get onto my e-mail provider's web page for some odd reason.

Abstract: 
Friends are of crucial importance to lesbians’ lives, their significance heightened due to lack of acceptance from blood family, work colleagues and society. Despite a proliferation of literature on lesbians’ love relationships, lesbians’ friendships remain understudied. In the light of theorising about widespread shifts in intimacy patterns in modern industrial societies, this thesis examines the role of friendship for contemporary lesbians. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, using lesbian feminist, feminist psychological and mainstream sociological theories to interpret lesbians’ negotiations of their friendships and preoccupations with their own continually developing sense of self.

The study finds that firstly, the most significant issue in negotiating friendships is deciding on a lesbian identity despite socialisation to ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. Friends are expected to be accepting and supportive or they are lost. Discrimination, the fact that the lover is the ‘best friend’, struggles with difference in lesbian communities, time constraints and a more general shift to individualism mean that community and family contacts are replaced by small, supportive and affirming friendship networks. These meet needs and within them lesbians negotiate a sense of self, but for the most part with no template of political consciousness. Secondly, while friendships are important, they are also difficult. The fluidity of the friendship relationship, blurred boundaries between friends and lovers, and women’s moral ‘imperative to care’ all provide barriers to communication. Thirdly, while lesbians value ‘the relational self’, a confident sense of self is challenged when close-connected relationships sit at odds both with mainstream, heterocentric culture, and with traditional models of psychology which promote independence and separateness.

Lesbians who are confident communicators, who have access to alternative feminist discourses which value relatedness, and who, together with their friends, are open to change, are able to negotiate satisfactory friendships and relationships. The study demonstrates lesbians’ complex subjectivities as changing selves are negotiated through friendships, love relationships and communities, particularly through experiences of loss.

So tell me internets, why is the desire to be called by your name a radical feminist issue? I am thinking about changing my name, and I never realised that there was still such a heated debate about this.[Poll #1413059][Poll #1413059]

I tried to find articles on the matter, and pretty much all sources I've found and read after a lazy Google search make it a front-line issue of modern-day extremist feminism to be attached to your own family name. This should probably teach me to be more careful about my sources, but the degree of conviction that women should change their names confounded me.

The articles I found stress that while most women don't even think about it, there are "some" for whom it is a "struggle" and that "more and more women" are keeping their name (and that's still only 10% in the US, apparently, not sure here about the numbers in the EU and Germany). On the whole, it seems to be an option that only the self-and/or career obsessed consider, or those who want to Make A Point. The writers (fair enough, we're talking writers on US "women's sites" dealing with marriage here, what did I expect?) make excuses and long explanations for those women with the quirky desire to hold on to their name ("They are very invested in their career", "they are uncertain about the wedding", "their husband's name doesn't go with their first name").

They also paint those husbands who change or even hyphenate their names and their fates in a very negative light ("that would be as oppressive to him as it would be to you to change your name! Would you want that?" - "He would be ridiculed by his peers!" - "His family line might be lost!" - "People would get confused!" - "It would mean that he's a feminist-brainwashed weakling!" - "It would be difficult for him to introduce you!" - "Think of the children!" - "He would think you are more attached to your father than to your husband!").

The consensus is that keeping your maiden name is bad, selfish and confusing, changing your name is the desirable default because of family lines and social acceptance. The rationalising strategies these people use to explain why 90% of women change their names are stellar, too. It's all their own, free choice, they don't mind their new identity, names don't matter, anyway, they want to belong to their husband's family, they want to fit in, it's more convenient for the insurance company/strangers/the family/children/the dog, they want to give up their ugly maiden name. Since everybody is equal now, there is no point in not making the convenient, traditionally and socially accepted choice. You have the freedom to choose between a right and a wrong option, apparently, and it's interesting that 90% of couples make the same free choice.

Some of the articles I found: 
Maiden Names ( have an excerpt - caution, rage warning )
Married or Maiden Name - Behind the Last Name Change
Should I keep my maiden name?
The Pros and Cons of Keeping Your Maiden Name
The Reasons Why Women Keep Their Maiden Name

THE COMPARISON.

As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
As that which from chafed musk cat's pores doth trill,
As the almighty balm of th' early east,
Such are the sweat drops of my mistress' breast ;
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweat drops, but pearl carcanets.
Rank sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles,
Like spermatic issue of ripe menstruous boils,
Or like the scum, which, by need's lawless law
Enforced, Sanserra's starvèd men did draw
From parboil'd shoes and boots, and all the rest
Which were with any sovereign fatness blest ;
( Read more... )

Via sf_drama . That community is full of win sometimes.

The eight "equally important" parts of  how thinness and happiness can be achieved:

1. Honesty
2. Physical appearance
3. Exercise
4. Mindset
5. Sex
6. Food
7. Men
8. Faith

Having had lots of fun with the Zeit.de version of it, I'm currently playing around with the "EU Profiler". It's a questionnaire on your position on 30 key issues for the this week's election which compares your answers to your country's parties' position on said issues, or to those of other European parties.

While my results and my ideal match are not terribly surprising, I liked being able to look at such a concise summary of why I'm going to vote the way I'm going to vote. I missed the comparison with party stances on individual positions which the Zeit version had, but the international comparison option is awesome and surprising in many cases.

I fell in love with these cookies which I found on this blog here. They're not fat free as I couldn't get hold of prune puree, and I used (again) only half the sugar advised in the recipe. I don't know what it is with recipes, in particular vegan recipes, why they go overboard with the use of sweeteners. The same is true for the use of dairy and fat in non-vegan recipes, and I usually cross-reference recipes to find the lowest common denominator.



I'm baking these for the sewing marathon next Tuesday. One brave girl from Crocky's theatre troupe has agreed to hem the costumes in the institute's student café that day, and she asked for company. I was going to go for muffins, but it's easier to prepare enough of these and they're tasty. I'll try to get them more chewy until then, though.

When Crocky and I went shopping on Tuesday we cracked an egg and decided to make banana pancakes with cinnamon, cocoa and sugar. I am curious whether there's a vegan alternative to the eggs in pancakes. I suspect it's probably baking powder, but I can't imagine the consistency'd stay the same. Huh. 



Banana pancakes consist of your basic pancake mixture of choice (in our case a small egg, 100mg flour, 100ml milk) and a puréd banana. No sugar, as the banana is sweet enough, although we did sprinkle some sugar on top in the end.

As linked by bronnyelsp before, there is an awesome documentary on eight people who believe that they are "English through and through". They agree to have their DNA checked, find that a percentage of their DNA hails from somewhere else, hilarity ensues.

( Playlist embedded here )

I'd love to take that test and learn about my genetic history. I suspect that it's mostly Eastern European.

It is so ridiculous that these island dwellers are all so convinced that they are "100% English", and I love how their test subjects all deal with the information that they are not, in fact, "100% English", whatever that means, by trying to explain some part of their identity by their genetic make-up ("Oh, far Eastern, so that's why I like spring rolls!").

I wonder whether that has any long-term effects, if they start feeling a little less hostile towards the particular ethnic group they are descended from. Makes me wish that test was both easily available, 1000% confidential, and required - that should have a positive outcome for some people with skeevy race issues.

Truth, justice, freedom, reasonably priced love, a hard-boiled egg, and Alzheimer's research, thanks to auronsgirl.

I like her lilacs, although the large one is sadly not very practical for attaching it to a bag as I had intended, I should have gone with the smaller one. Next year, definitely.


( (c) ~Yoodi)

This is more a memo to myself than anything. I found this blog, entitled "Fat free vegan kitchen", while searching for cookie recipes, and not only do their cookies look amazing, they also have a lot of other recipes that look great, like a lentil soup. Must check out the rest.

To His Mistress Going to Bed

Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy ;
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe ofttimes, having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing, though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breast-plate, which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopp'd there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed-time.
( Read more... )

I had to take a break from the internet because reading blogs became just too time-consuming, so if I commented even less than usual it was not because I don't care, but because I am working on my big, scary thesis. It's going ok - but I am scared out of my mind that I won't finish it, that it won't be any good. I have about a third in rough draft and the remaining two thirds in notes, which is probably good, but I am not fast enough. I wanted to have half of it down by now, but both the chapter on events and the chapter on performativity are giving me more pain than I thought they would. Can't wait to start with the actual work on the texts properly, though, the looking forward to doing that is what keeps me going right now.

( Adventures with soy milk )

Other than that, I've mostly been reading for the big, scary thesis and playing the trumpet. Which is still a lot of fun, and I'm playing about three times a week now, and I like the way it's going. The sounds that come out of my instrument sound a lot better than they did in the beginning, and I am gathering confidence to join Crocky's ensemble after Pentecost.

Now I only have to get my act together and work harder than I have done so far. And stop being scared.

Recently, an article in Die Zeit on the role of German fathers in time of post-feminism sparked a lively discussion  gender wank in the comment section that is still going on a couple of months later. I occasionally read the comments only to find that people seem to be following this guide to the letter: Derailing for Dummies. Read it. It's brilliant.

Die Zeit is supposed to be a German quality paper but the comment section is a gathering of tabloid brains who use their college vocabulary to discuss issues that were relevant back in the nineties and say things that I usually only hear from particularly dim YouTube users.

The gist is: we have achieved equality, the pay gap is a thing of the past, all feminists hate men, and where are my rights and my "boy's day"? It is women are damaging men because there are so many of them in our educational system, so that's one way how women oppress men: by forcing men out of the educational system. Also, evil women force their weak partners to be a "New Man" and then leave them for the "old" kind, leaving their poor partners battered and broken - which only goes to show how much more powerful women are these days.

People are spouting things like these:

• "How dare you call me misogynistic! I was only saying that women are clearly better suited for child raising and men for studying physics, it's in their nature, and everything else would be denying basic facts of biology."
• "You do realise that your tone is not helping your cause, don't you?"
• "How is it not oppressive that boys don't have Girl's Day!"
• "Since we have equality, the only role in life that men have left is that of impregnating the women who choose them, how come women aren't conscious of that immense power they have over men? They can choose them! They are more powerful than men, who have to fight for women."
• "Oh, sweetie, that is so typical for a radfems like you. Really, it makes me laugh, how can you expect us to take any of this seriously?"

To make it worse, it's all in the awkward, letter-to-the-editor-style my countrywomen and -men use when conversing online, and it's in my mother tongue, so that comfy linguistic and emotional puffer zone I have when I read idiots discuss these things in English is non-existent and ten minutes and three pages into the discussion I feel like strangling someone. It's not only the sheer small-minded ignorance of the arguments, it's the vocabulary. If people use words like "radfem" or "feminazi" in English, it's just a word, it doesn't have any of the playground-humiliation connotation "Kampflesbe" or "Kampfemanze" have (although nowadays I think that "Kampflesbe" [militant dyke] is pretty cool).

The way the mostly upper class users don't realise that in this world, not everything is about them and that there are plenty of people, like, for example, "working class" girls and boys or people with a background in migration who still do NOT have the opportunities they themselves had is truly baffling, not unusual, judging by the experiences I had in education courses with gender topics at my university. When they do discuss people Not Them, they do so with a detached, generalising arrogant ignorance which is not much better. Gnah.

It's a bad outlook when discussions I have with xenophobic High School dropout teenagers from the US about why LGBT people should all be locked up in jail are less threatening for my faith in mankind than merely reading discussions among supposedly educated, self-proclaimed "liberal-" and "open-minded" Germans. 

Something nice for a change: I usually only whine about this city, but finally, I found something that I love about this city: it has may bugs!!
Yay, may bugs!


I saw the first ones today on my way to my appointment with my GP and rescued two from the street and put them back between some shrubs in the park. I hope they don't get stepped on.

I love, love, love these beetles, and I am not sure whether I should be glad that I don't live in a time in which they are so numerous that they they threaten our harvests or sad that they are so rare that when I saw one of them today I stopped and watched it until it has waggled out of sight, trying to remember when I've last seen one - which was back in the late nineties, and even back then my mother called me to show it to me because it was such a rare sight.

Also, I found 'Es gibt keine Maikäfer mehr'  on YouTube - ah, childhood memories - and pest control wank in the comments. Seriously, Reinhard Mey fans, I would have thought you were above that. o_O.

In a part of the mines without dwarven (architectural) remains, that is. I also love how they seem to have used the exact filter set the guys who did the Twilight movie used just to ram home the fact that the story of this movie is really Serious Business, and serious business requires an excess of blues and grey rather than pinks and yellows, apparently. I liked movies which are able to create this effect without filters, but tastes differ.

So, we watched the newish Harry Potter trailer this morning and while there are many things in there that I really like, there are also things that I did not enjoy, unsurprisingly. One was the gollum-inferi and the interior of the cave. Maybe there is not much creative leeway with caves.

( In case you're worried about spoilers )

Also, while I am quite weary of the changes they made, I am looking forward to this movie because in spite of the gratuitous filter use (look at those colours!) it is so stunningly pretty. Adaptation-wise I doubt that these people's assessment of the movie is wrong, though - concentration of romance and changes to the ending sound exactly like what I would have expected. The spoilers of the movie found here and here also don't really make me that exited about this.


( More trailer stills and thoughts )

Right. Back to different concepts of performativity and mediality.

Take a look at this:


Does this look... somehow... adult-themed to you? (Click here if you want to look at it in all its NSFW glory).

No?

Well, sorry, you sexually depraved deviant, you obviously don't share Amazon's family values (and shame on you, just look at it. It's clearly promoting not only the homosexual lifestyle, but also bestiality). This is clearly more offensive than, say,  the 120 days of Sodom. At least according to Amazon.com - as you may have already read, they're removing some titles from "some searches and bestseller lists and  the sales rankings from books they consider "adult themed".

Personally, I have no idea who makes the chops and why. King and King retains its ranking, so does The Different Dragon. My Daddy's Roommate does not, nor does Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimmingpool Library, or Fingersmith, but as I said, some editions of the 120 Days of Sodom do.

I wonder where this is going, especially considering some of the other books and merchandise allowed to keep its rating.

There's a summary of what has been going on here in case you're interested, and here is an affected writer's timeline.

This is gonna be good, I can tell.

EDIT: And the plot thickens. A SA employee's post on the AmazonFail proposed a different theory. According to him (1) either a vigilante organisation comparable to Innocence Jihad during during strikethrough/boldthrough/LoLJ's been reporting books with a specific kind of tags en masse, resulting in their adult flagging, (2) in addition to that, considering that apparently, Amazon's reporting system is not automatised, someone made "mistakes" influenced by personal bias when marking books as "adult themed" - or (3) someone did it for the lulz.

What gets me about the whole thing are the kind of books which were affected - LGBT books, no surprise there, it's common practice that any media with LGBT content are flagged as "adult", BDSM-related books, see above, but survivors, too? And feminists? Huh.

There is also early troll claims authorship of this and oh god, there is a twitter and an article on the Guardian (thanks, Bron).

Oh, I'll be needing some more popcorn for this.

Glory be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

- Gerald Manley Hopkins

... with apple sauce filling because I loved the different textures in my Blackout muffins so much. They did not turn out as pretty, but they are tasty and the smell is amazing.

I used lordhellebore 's recipe, halved, because I did not want to make as many cupcakes. I also used two apples for both cupcakes and apple sauce partly because I enjoy the rich taste of the apples we bought last week and because they needed eating up.



For the sauce, I used two diced apples, a table spoon of cinnamon and a pinch of ginger. Instead of anything fancy I just eased a spoonful of the stuff into the still warm cupcakes - unfortunately, they collapsed during the process, resulting in the crater look above. I lost track of time half-way through and was scared that I had not baked them enough to boot, so I put them back in for another five minutes in the already cooling oven - now the dough is golden brown and crunchy, but sadly, they remained in their collapsed state.

Crocky loves them, even though I used too much cinnamon in the dough. I'll give them another shot next week.

The Church of.... Body Modification?

Really?

I found another reason today to hate Psychology Today. We all know that we're not suppose to dress like those filthy, filthy sluts, right? No short skirts and no make-up and nothing that invites the poor driven rapists to rape us, because of course those poor people can't control themselves, right?

So, don't wear something too riling, otherwise you might have been, "asking for it". And don't walk too confidently, because you might be riling them, anyway:

 

For this reason, robbers are especially apt to target people who are flaunting material possessions or even just displaying a cocky, superior attitude. Street predators have their own word for such behavior—"flossing"—and it infuriates them. "It's a very visible reminder of their situation," Wright adds, "of being poor, that they've got nothing in their pockets."

Psychology Today would also like to inform you that if you dress too modestly, you are as, if not more likely to be attacked because high necklines and full-body cover as well as bowed down walk = submissive personality and a flirty invitation for sex.

"The same team also found that rapists tend to be more able than average to interpret facial cues, such as a downward gaze or a fearful expression. It's possible this skill makes rapists especially able to spot passive, submissive women. One study even showed that rapists are more empathetic toward women than other criminals—although they have a distinct empathy gap when it comes to their own victims. A highly attuned rapist and a woman who's oblivious to hostile body language make a dangerous combination.

Even personality plays a role. Conventional wisdom holds that women who dress provocatively draw attention and put themselves at risk of sexual assault. But studies show that it is women with passive, submissive personalities who are most likely to be raped—and that they tend to wear body-concealing clothing, such as high necklines, long pants and sleeves, and multiple layers. Predatory men can accurately identify submissive women just by their style of dress and other aspects of appearance. The hallmarks of submissive body language, such as downward gaze and slumped posture, may even be misinterpreted by rapists as flirtation."

So you can totally prevent being raped or robbed by wearing confidently, but not flaunting what you have, not wearing provocative clothes, but not too modest ones, not engage in conversation with men and walking away, but not in a submissive way because that might just be too flirty, and everyone knows that flirty women were asking for it. Because being a rape victim can totally be prevented and is all about the personality of the victim rather than that of the rapist.

I know that walking around while on the phone in back alleys is about as bright as entering the Shades before the times of the Thieves' Guild, but the attitude of this article seems to be that those who do the right things will never be raped or mugged, and that is just bullshit.
 

( They offer some tips on risk reduction. )
So, be a good girl and stay at home, and always make a point on dressing the right way!

Given the entire purpose of MMORPGs it's rather strange, but I used to hate instances. This is why I didn't do them very often, which is why I sucked at them, which is why I didn't like going - especially with my Shadow Priest, because even though my DPS sort of sucked, I sucked even worse at healing, which I was usually forced to do, because, "Of course you'll manage! It's not that hard!" - which of course it was, especially in Ulda, where it's at times nigh impossible to see anyone and people kept running out of reach or not wait for the drinking casters, which is why no heals arrived, which is why they ended up dying a lot, which is why they got angry at me, which is why I avoided dungeon invites.
So - not really my thing.

Until I started going with people who know what they're doing, and until I started playing a class I enjoy rolling in a dungeon. Yes, I know, everybody loves them, they are ridiculously overpowered, they will be nerfed and stop being so awesome, but to my battered cloth-wearing little heart it is such a relief to be able to play a fierce and plate-encased imba melée class, it's bliss.

In other words I have just spent the evening on a different server than usual doing ridiculously fast Hellfire Ramparts/Blood Furnace runs with three other DKs, among them niaseath, of course, and a Priest and Shammy, rounding it off with an stint into the Slave Pens. And I Had A Good Time.



My DPS didn't suck, either, but maybe that was just everybody else only having played their DK for a couple of days and in one case being two level below the rest of us. Still, during the fight with Quagmirran I ended up top of the damage meter for the first time ever, and seeing as this is about my seventh time in an instance at all, I'm rather pleased with myself.

Fun. Me. In a dungeon. Go figure. 

Yesterday evening I discovered that the full moon was reflected in our skylight in a way that, to my delight, made it look as though we had four moons. I did not manage to take proper pictures of it, but it looked pretty awesome. Ever since I went to the planetarium with my mother for the first time and heard about the amount of natural satellites in our solar system I regretted that we have only one (hey, Saturn has over fifty, Jupiter over sixty, even Mars managed to catch himself two, but out loser planet sticks with one).



( More moon (3) )

Other than that, I am still shocked about the tragedy at the German school in Baden-Württemberg yesterday. Another school shooting, more cookie-cutter articles on it which read exactly like the ones from last time, covers full of crying teenage girls, speculations about shooters, Counter-Strike and porn and still no idea what to do to keep students from running amok in our schools. I doubt that any of the suggestions that have been made - psychologists at schools (didn't help Finland), metal detectors (didn't help the US), even stricter gun control (didn't help us)- is going to help.
What is so baffling that it is nearly funny is what is going on in the comment sections of major German papers - some blame the "injured pride of the German middle class male which does not commit honour crimes like lower class children with a background in migration, but run amok with guns". Another user "blames the miss-matched gender ratio in the German educational system", the "lack of role-models", and yet another user muses that it might be a good idea to force parents to notify the school if they have weapons so that those can have an eye on their kids, yet others want a nation-wide ban of Counter-Strike.
And I? I don't know. I really don't. It is horrible that so many students feel left out at our schools that some of them snap and shoot their teachers and fellow-students, and I think that if something has to change, it ought to be that before our gun laws become even stricter, or we implement a nationwide male quota in the educational system, and school psychologists can't hurt there.

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!

My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

* I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
* What I create will be with you in mind.
* It'll be done sometime this year (2009).
* You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be something written, some physical thing made, could be anything at all, but I will make it myself. It's entirely my choice what it is. No quibbles, no refunds.
* I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch?

Oh, the catch is that you put this in your journal as well. If you don't, you don't get anything.

EDIT: #1: lordhellebore , #2 angie_21_237 , #3 moonystone , #4 fourthage , #5 crocky_wock .

Best get crafting, then! I doubt that I'll do anything extremely strange, though. Mildly, maybe, but not extremely.

~~~~

Sounds like fun and a good excuse to spend time crafting instead of working, I love it. Also, don't feel pressured into posting this yourselves, I know how busy some of you guys are.

Weirdest recipe ever, but it was perfect because we had two eggs left and loads of ... I have really no idea what to call it in English, and apparently, other people don't, either. It's called "Quark" in German, and you can buy it as "quark" in some supermarkets in Britain, but people also call it "fromage frais", "curd", "low fat curd" or "farmer's cheese". Wiki lists it as "quark (cheese)". Huh.

Anyway, it turned out great. Very tasty with the mild flavour of vanilla due to the custard.