Telling Dave the story of my ride into town earlier that evening:
“So I was burning down Sydney Rd, and I overtook some stooge on a BMX who wasn’t wearing a helmet.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah – I totally scorched him. Then a few metres later I’m slowing down past Royal Park to take off my jumper and he burns past me, spinning his tits off on his little one-speeder. Suddenly, ‘BAM!’ he busts a crank or something! And he has to pull over because his bike is busted”
“Cool.”
“Yeah – that’ll teach him to take me on with a little retro-chic on/off BMX.”
“Sure – so you’re telling me you pushed him to the point of destruction?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
i can’t tame wild women…
In response to scott’s comment here, on the Whedon EqualityNow speech.
I was quite struck by Whedon’s comment about not only writing strong women characters but also writing male characters who thought they were the fushizzle. One the one hand – yay! – but on the other, I was reminded of some thoughts I’d had previously about the way some men/male characters are attracted to strong women/characters. They may love and adore them, but some are also attracted to the idea of controlling or weakening them (which reminds me of a Hot Club of Cowtown lyric: “I can’t tame wild women, but I can make tame women wild”). This seems to apply to people like Spike.
In the most recent Angel I’ve watched (Guise will be Guise) the fake swami makes a comment about how Angel needed to find a small blonde woman and trash her as a way of dealing with his anger/distress about being trashed by Darla when she found out he had a soul. Angel’s response was non-verbal, but he was obviously thinking ‘hm, he might be right’. That could just have been Angel piling on a little more guilt (he is guilt-meister), but it mightn’t…
Of course, the blonde in question was Buffy – and Angel made an effort to trash her in the last Angel episode where we saw her in L.A. (I Will Remember you). He might remember that visit fondly, as the one chance he had to be human with her, but she left only remembering his totally trashing her. He knows this, he’s packing guilt for it (as per usual), but… don’t mean he didn’t get some passive-aggressive payback pleasure re Darla/Buffy moving on with Reilly-ace-of-spies.
But of course – Angel has issues. That’s his job.
so why do you write these strong women characters…?
If there was any reason why you wouldn’t marry Joss Whedon, his Equalitynow speech will do away with it.
so like, you know
So I’ve watched the OC about 4 or maybe even 5 weeks in a row now.
I think I’m hooked.
It’s so completely ridiculous – the ‘teenagers’ speak like world-weary script writers, everyone’s either really rich or ‘living in a caravan’ and really rich. Even the ‘poorest’ characters wear clothes that are about 10 million times more expensive than mine. They all live by the sea, drive expensive cars and are ridiculously skinny.
I was a bit of a Dawson’s Creek fan, in that I wouldn’t turn it off it was on, but I wouldn’t tape it or seek it out. I was delighted in the last episode of Buffy that I watched (Out of my Mind to see Spike declare that Pacey was being an idiot because ‘she’ didn’t love him.
Poor old Pacey. I was sure he was a special needs character from the ads. But he …wasn’t?
Yeah, so I’m watching the OC. I forget about it as soon as the program finishes, though the ads kind of catch my interest.
It is so ridiculous. I have no idea what’s going on. But I have Opinions about the characters:
Marissa (the teeny sex queen one who’s on all the ads for shampoo and stuff):
Is a skinny dog who really annoys me. She needs to pin her hair back.
I’m not convinced that she’s actually an alcaholic.
Seth (the dark haired young fullah):
is obviously the one I’m supposed to dig because he likes manga and arty stuff and reading.
His minor lispy thing is meant to be hot.
I like him but he kind of annoys me. I can’t bring myself to be really impressed or to actually care.
Look, I’ve lost interest in this silly list.
Why are all the characters so young? Even the mums and dads are young, or trying desperately to look young. Yucky.
The only thing I really care about is that these kids seem to go to Buffy’s high school in Beverly Hills/Sunnydale. The same school that the film Loser was set in.
melbourne is obsessed
The adult population of Brunswick is somewhat subdued today. Last night’s finals match between Australia and Italy offered everyone in this part of Melbourne a team to barack for, whether you’re born in Australia, Italy, Greece or some other part of the soccer-playing universe.
In one of the most Italian cafes in Brunswick the owner wasn’t in, but there was a vigorous play-by-play discussion of the match carried on by the Irish and Scotts staff.
At Nino and Joes, there were only two butchers working, neither of whom was moving very quickly. There was no bantering.
And the mediterannean supermarket was deserted except for a few skips wandering vaguely up and down the isles, fondling all sorts of things but really only coming home with a dozen cans of diced tomatoes.
It’s the second week of the school holidays here, and the parks and streets and front yards in my neighbourhood are full of unsupervised gangs of kids playing complex variations on the regulation soccer match, adapted for concrete pitches and passing cars. It’s only 8 degrees, the wind is bitingly cold, but it seems appropriate.
I haven’t seen any of the soccer, but it’s everywhere. Melbourne is obsessed. And Brunswick is particularly so. Perhaps my favourite story is from the bus ride home the other day. The Italian bus driver (the one who steps down to welcome people onto the bus, or stops the bus to chat with passing friends) was busily engaged in a complicated discussion of the matches to date with a young skip alternakid and a tall and elegant African lady. After the tentative “who did you go for?” and “Australia of course” responses, they assessed the socceroos all the way to my stop.
look, we’re on the internet!
It’s odd to see bits of my world on the internet. If you go here you can see a building that I pass every week as I ride into town to go dancing. And that’s about the time of day I ride past (with allowances for seasonal variation of course).
The bit that’s strange though, is that I don’t often see the building from that angle – mostly as I’m barelling past trying not to die on the roundabout of death.
look at this
Cartoon doods without their guts on. here.
where’s the good goddamn chocolate? WHERE?
I take time out to focus my eyes.
I’m having trouble staying focussed on these nasty chapter rewrites. I certainly can’t divide the text up into individual words any more – it’s just one blob of known-by-heart text now, and I can no longer (if I ever could) tell what’s crap and what’s not. I am relying entirely on the Supes’ scribbledy comments, praying she knows what she’s doing. The bits where she says ‘rewrite this’ or ‘need to make this clearer’ almost make me cry. Creative work is kind of beyond me right now. I’m not even sure I know what the thesis is about any more, let alone what each chapter is about.
I am definitely No Good at introductions. Each one has been so scribbled over it looks like a nest of black jellyfish squabbling over fountain pen. I just suck at this part. I’m still not entirely sure about what I should actually be doing. Because I’m just following directions now (it seemed the best idea, especially after I was instructed to edit the same section at least 3 times, crossing back and forth over the same lines, editing, reverting, editing and reverting again), I’m not actually learning anything. I do feel a bit like a real dummy.
But it’s not a sad thing – it’s kind of nice to just stop thinking (critically or otherwise) and just be told what to do. I think I want one of those menial jobs where you do repetitive tasks over and over again. Maybe I should work at McDonalds, or do a *deleted* dance class.
I’m not sure if I should be making things shorter and crisper, or longer and artier. I’m pretty sure some parts were to be longer and artier, but some parts which I had made artier are now to be reverted to crisper forms. Sigh.
And why is it that I only seem to know about 20 words, now? Surely there are more words out there in the english language?
Look, I’ll just go back to Doing As I’m Told for now, then when I’ve finished each individual chapter’s overall edit, I’ll go on and actually write (for about the zillionth time) The Introduction again (formerly Chapter One the literature review and The Introduction. And formerly-to-that Capter one: the Introduction). Can you feel my pain?
Frankly, I have no idea, at all, whatsoever, about what I’m doing, what I should do, and what counts as ‘good stuff’ or not.
Double sigh.
Where’s the good goddamn chocolate? WHERE? I’m not normally the sort of barbie who fusses over things like chocolate – you know the type. They have posters or tshirts that say things like ‘i love chocolate’. I like the stuff, but heck, there are other, more important things in my (gastronomic) life.
But right now, I just feel that it would be appropriate.
tragedy
the first disc of season 2 Angel is missing from the video shop. What will we do?
recent reading
Ok, so I haven’t read that article, yet, but I have read most of this:
It’s one of the most recent contriubtions to dance studies work on African American vernacular dance history, edited by Tommy DeFrantz, who does some interesting work on queer black masculinity in dance. While there’s a little more emphasis on concert dance than I’m really interested in, there are also some neat articles, especially one on ring shouts which is really worth reading for a discussion of African slaves’ experiences with christianity, as represented in dance.