isle of gramarye (the crystal goblet and the wine)

I'm finally reading Elaine Scarry's "On Beauty and Being Just," - one of the ones I've been pretending to have read for years - and, idek, guys, I kind of hate it. Like, the prose is gorgeous, of course, hers always is, but I feel like she's strawmanning all over the place. I'll agree that extrapolating from feminist critiques of beauty to argue that, say, a vase is negatively reified when looked at is silly as anything. But similarly, I feel like extrapolating from a vase or a flower to human aesthetics is just as wrongheaded, and that's what she keeps doing. The feminist critique doesn't object to beauty qua beauty, it objects to the weaponization of beauty in the service of racism, classism, and misogyny. So I just. Don't know what to do with this book. And am frustrated.


some linkspamming:

oursin, 'Adequate' and 'competent' are not, in fact, pejoratives - this conversation was something I really needed to read. When I was in fifth grade, my parents convinced me that even top marks were meaningless, because all my As meant was that I was doing better than the other kids, not that I was working at my own maximum potential. So I just possibly have some issues.

Abigail Nussbaum reviews the Avengers - everything she said, please.

new Regina Spektor Album with streaming option!

eta: Garland Grey, Buffy Vs. The Beige Demon: Good Riddance to Riley Finn: Most modern television shows display their enlightenment by unleashing paper sexists at their heroine and allowing us to take the clobbering of these shadows as a triumph over sexism. Which, in the unscripted world, is too often not a douchebag saying “You can’t cuz you’re a girl” but is instead someone internalizing that belief and using their power to punish you for it. This scenario creates a false image in the culture of “What Sexism Looks Like” which men use to calibrate their understanding of misogyny. Which means anything less blatant than THAT is just the moaning of people who can’t compete AND once the show has labeled itself NOT SEXIST, it is free to deal in subtler, more insidious forms of sexism. Also with lovely Classic Trek exempla.

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I am safely transported & tucked in to the lakeshore in Michigan City - I went swimming yesterday, even though the water temp is still hovering just under 50 degrees Fahrenheit, because I needed to be in the Big Water and also that's just how I roll.

Disappointingly, missed passing the Spanish proficiency test by a single point; will retake in August, shouldn't be too much of a problem, I've already googled up correct answers to three questions I was unsure of, and the test given hasn't changed in like forty years.

At some point during this week I'mma go see The Avengers in the cinema, because they'll screen it for non-3D-enabled persons here. The cam dl is simply not enough, I need to see my babies large as life and twice as beautiful.

Am reading Mary Barton. It's all right, I guess, but I haven't managed to get any more pleasure out of it than that sort of pleasant meandering boredom that long realist nineteenth-century novels so often produce.

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... apparently recording this stuff is just about the most fun a girl can have alone in her apartment waiting to move. idek. All Avengers this time:

Hold Me Down by elspethdixon and seanchai
Avengers comicsverse Steve/Tony, rated pg-13, 24:06 minutes
at sendspace

Perception by ashinan
Avengers movieverse Steve/Tony, rated g, 9:06 minutes
at sendspace

My Heart Keeps Beating by ashinan
Avengers movieverse Steve/Tony, rated g, 11:02 minutes
at sendspace

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You know, The Avengers is great and everything, but I think what I really want is for Joss to write a tv show about them all and have it become a breakaway ten-season-running hit. Think about it: musical episode, bodyswap, that time in Season Three when everyone gets dosed with Evil Gas, a whole season of Steve/Tony hatelove UST, the inevitable drama when everyone on the team sleeps with/breaks up with everyone else, periodic Asgardian mayhem, Natasha delivering incisive feminist commentary on the whole thing under her breath. Bucky as the surprise cast addition halfway through the second season, Peter Parker as the sixth-season gamechanger. A kicky opening credits sequence.

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because, y'all, I freaking LOVE chicken shawarma; it is the food of the gods.

Cardamom is the perfect spice
Avengers, Steve/Tony, Clint/Natasha, post-film coda: now with added shawarma!
{movie spoilers, food, first kisses, names, soldier issues}
2536 words, general

at the AO3
( or behind the cut )

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So this weekend I moved all my stuff out of my apartment, and now I am apartment-camping and cramming Spanish for the graduate language credit test-out on the 7th. Kind of fun, ngl. Learning languages is such a nice break from criticism, because the learning task is so much more straightforward - memorize, internalize, one word after another, one structure after another. No pressure of originality or argument.

Um. I am sort of a haze of exam-period scatteredness.

This afternoon my awesome students and I are watching "Jaynestown" and eating pizza, because they said they'd rather have a class party than a day off :)

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My tarot reading tonight told me that communication was key, that I was going on an important journey that meant a change of life as well as place, and that my future holds a favorable result for an examination undergone by a youth. Always nice to have an affirmation like that when studying for quals!

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sleep tonight. no really. it's time.

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So I went & bought myself a microphone & have been recording merrily. The fruits of my labors:

Time's sublimest target is a soul forgot, by me
Dark is Rising unrequited Will/Bran, mature, 12:22 minutes
at sendspace

+

Precious Illusion by simmysim
Avengers comicsverse, Steve+Tony+bodies+transcendence, general, 26:50 minutes
at sendspace

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