House of Forgotten Thoughts

1. I had two good dates in two nights, did Science! on both, finally got to show Meowse my beautiful ukulele, and discovered D. Wendell has the world's cuddliest goat. Seriously, that goat is secretly a dog.

2. I am hiring a personal assistant for two hours a week to get my paperwork life under control. This will force me to get things in good enough order for the assistant to do the less personal bits. Fingers crossed for changing bad patterns of several decades.

3. In pursuit of this, this morning I started a load of laundry and did about 20 minutes of room cleaning with no panicking at all. I hope this keeps up at least long enough to excavate.

4. I took the cat for a walk yesterday evening and we only heard a few distant pops so she didn't freak out. It was a lovely walk. (I take the cat out to our back yard on a harness and a long lead, so she can smell everything and fantasize about being allowed to murder birds again.)

5. Ukulele satisfaction!

On advice from several people I went ahead and ordered a second uke, a Rainbow Dash colored Makala Dolphin. General received wisdom is, "If you're only going to spend <$50 on an ukulele, get this one. Really." So now I have a recruiter uke which I can take on my trip to Amsterdam without worrying about it, annnnnnnnd

that means I can tune my more expensive one to Low-G!* J and I walked down to our friendly local instrument store today and picked up a new ukulele string for me, and we did not die of heat.

* Standard ukulele tuning is "reentrant," which means that what would usually be the lowest note is tuned an octave higher. Search "my dog has fleas" and you'll hear how the notes are arranged.

Low-G tuning means taking that octave-high slot and tuning it low instead, so the notes are lined up in order like on a guitar. There are advantages to both, so a common source of Ukulele Acquisition Syndrom (UAS) is "but I need a second one for Low-G!"

ALFRED: You’ll both go either way in the end. We all do.
- me, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Magic, Act II, Scene ii

I identify as genderqueer and pansexual. Trying to capture the sense of permutation available in sexual and gender expression, in the voice of a character who isn’t long on rhetoric or academic gender vocabulary, is an exercise in frustration, and I will have excluded people. Starting with myself.

Here is about 1000 words of me chewing on that problem if you’re into that sort of thing. Discussion welcome.
( Do you like lists? There are lists. )
I’m open to suggestions on how to improve the nuance in this scene, add more dimensions later in the work, or do better next time.

Hey! I got a new job. They will give me all the moneys, and the job title is Taxonomist and I will actually get to taxonomize. This is awesome.

J had to take a few days off because he's at max vacation so we spent 7 hours at the zoo yesterday and our feet are bruised. This is also awesome.

I am so close to finishing the chapter I've been working on for 7 weeks, I can almost taste it. I just don't know how to get OUT. Which sadly puts me on level with my protagonists. This is frustrating.

But I'm almost done with that chapter and I have four chapters up already! Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Magic has so far had about 150 readers with a 10% Like rate, which is damn respectable. This is awesome.

I met a couple of Canadians from Tumblr the other night and took them to dinner and showed them around the Gayborhood, and this was awesome.

I visited corivax and caladri and stayed overnight and petted their technically-feral Grey Lump That Goes Meow and watched the Capaldi Who premiere. This was awesome, except for the Moffatt parts. :P

I am signed up to attend my sister's sexy high protocol play party next month, and some kind of kink-related nonference apparently, and I am Making An Effort and Going Outside With Other People.

I am keeping up with my two pen pals and feeling very accomplished about that. It's a real boost to be able to materially support someone in a way that's substantial to them. This is awesome.

I think that is momentarily all the things. Look, things!

So... It's been a while. I'm still reading every day. I've been teaching myself to draw fractals (especially the Levy C curve, yum), and vellum graph paper REALLY HELPS, wow. I need some hex paper to really dig into the Sierpinski Triangle/Koch Curve family.

I signed up for two prison pen pals. More on that in next post.

I have a job interview on Friday with a major player in personalized online advertising, which kind of makes me cringe, but I did some digging and they look non-terrible. They have very transparent "this is what we've collected on you and here's an opt out button" material for the public, which is awesome. No particular complaints from privacy watchdogs. And holy snakes, the pay and commute would be a DREAM and it's dead center of my expertise.

I'm getting my hairs cut today in prep for interview.

I'm managing to meditate every day for four months now. (That is a pretty huge deal.)

I'm still writing the last chapter of Act II of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Magic, and I've posted two chapters in public for people to actually see now! I'm posting every two weeks to keep a solid buffer and allow interest and audience to grow over time, if that is a thing. We will see if that is a thing. It also lets me realize things like "there should be more playing card motif throughout Act II, I'd better add that before I release chapters."

I read most of King Lear on Friday morning as research for said fic, and then learned things about poetic forms to decide which one to use, and then independent of that decision defined the keys for an R&G sestina, which are in order:
-- Two / Heads / Play / Questions / Dead / Name
leading eventually to the final triplet:
-- Two / Play / Dead

The common theme to most of the things I've been doing is that they feel useful but don't forward goals like control over my house or job or money. They're hobby-useful, not survival-useful. It's an ongoing problem for me. (Haircut and meditation are exceptions. Applying for jobs feels like walking through fire.)

I feel like my *happiness* setpoint is actually all right. But my functionality setpoint remains near 1.5, these days flickering up to 3 now and then (on a scale of 10). It's frustrating.

But, happiness setpoint is higher, and that's the one that research says is almost impossible to shift, so that part's good.

Theme:

"I just try to be me as hard as I can." -- My sister LG, when I asked how her life was so together.

"Always be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman." -- Andy Biersack

Dress code:

I want you to be comfortable. And if you want an excuse to dress up, I want you to be glamorous. Don't worry about over-dressing, we will all be delighted to look at you. Don't worry about under-dressing, we will all be busy looking at USO Captain America.

Mood and tone:

I will have a lot of color prints of my personal heroes and characters named Robin stuck to the walls. There may be tacky party favors.

I will probably be showing incredibly cheesy superhero movies with the sound down. There will not be music or movie sound because my favorite party activity is talking.

I will welcome food and social drinking. BYOIntoxicants, I'll have some snacks.

Tributes welcomed:

• Foods and drinks you want to eat or share
  (I personally love fresh fruits, creamy desserts, chocolate, cheese, and savory foods)


• Job leads :P
  (my contract ends this Friday)


• Eye candy
  (worn)


• New friends
  (feel free to invite someone you think I should know)


• Songs and stories

That last one... I care about stories. A lot. The stories we tell about ourselves and each other, the resonances we find in the world.

It means a lot to me that someone has offered to come to my party as a glamorous superhero.
It means a lot to me that someone has offered to belly dance a song of my choice.
If there is something you would like to perform or recite for me, in public or private, let me know.
If there's a song lyric or story or character you find meaningful in relation to me, print it out or send me a link. (More traditional media gifts also accepted with delight.)
If there's a thing you want to go and do with me, I commit to seriously trying to make time for it instead of letting it wander off into 'sometime.'
If you just want to tell me how you see me, I will sob all over you and be very grateful.

This is a long road I'm on, figuring out the shape I want in the world at any given moment, and all of you are part of that. Thank you.

So, um. Practical ambience question:
[Poll #1969005]

Paaaaaaaaaaaaaartyyyyyyyyyyy!

So, I spend a lot of time wondering how people are gendering me. Because it's so hard to get masculine speed-reads out of people (most clearly demonstrated through clerks and waitstaff who are required to use a gendered honorific), I tend to get obsessed with it and try harder and harder.

It gets to the point where getting dressed is just a grind of despair and I don't even really have an interest in butching up a lot of days, it's just a habit to try (while knowing it will make jack-all difference). This is dull and annoying and takes a lot of mental energy. I feel disconnected. I really do want to do all the gender presentations, but usually the "but what if today is the day I get called sir" stops me, which is gross.

So I shaved my head, which has a lot of gendered stuff tangled up with it (I have a Sinead O'Connor skull, which increases my feminine signaling, but shaved heads are Usually A Guy Thing, but...). Because it increases my self-perception of feminine cues, I took the opportunity to get my ears pierced and paint my nails. I have been wearing my big show-off-my-assets bras lately for back support; I haven't bound in two months because it is a migraine trigger and I've needed the physical self-care. I am trying to relax into a while of "people will just read me as female (like they always do) and since that's my deliberate signaling that is more okay than usual."

arjache got me a purple knit hat with a white bobble and pink highlights[1], which I've been wearing to keep my head warm, so my standard public presentation right now is leather jacket with lavender bobble hat, breast shape fairly prominent.

The other day, a customer ahead of me in line said, "I'll just get out of this gentleman's way." I pitched my voice way the hell down and ran with it, and then privately squeed with the barista because what the HELL.

I don't understand. It seems totally random and I just don't even know. I don't know how often people are reading me as ambiguous or masculine from various angles. Since incidents like this imply that it's COMPLETELY RANDOM, I keep trying to bring myself to just dress how I feel right in the mirror and screw what people read, but the only reason I change my social cues is so people will see them and it's all just a tangled mess and argh.

I realized recently, when making up Dr. Who self-insertion fanfic (a lifelong hobby of mine), that I was going to have an awkward pronoun conversation with him at this point, and I don't know if even the automatic translation circuit could fix pronouns for me since I don't even know what pronouns I want a lot of the time. So I'd end up having to have this big complicated conversation and maybe a character development arc where I either get to go to a placetime where they have a gender framework for me and I can internalize it and get on with considering everywhere else an alien culture, or maybe just get a wearable perception filter that I can use to force people's gendered perceptions (as locally applicable) to match how I want to be read.[2]

God, that latter one would fix a lot of things.

But I'd rather be facing down daleks than having that goddamn conversation again, even with one of the most understanding people in the multiverse.

This has been thoughts.

[1] The pink spells out 'THEY/THEM' wrapping all around the hat. (It's the topmost hat here.) If people make out the words at all, the first assumption is that I'm a TMBG fan, but I am a TMBG fan, so that works out, and it's a nice internally pronoun-affirming security object.

[2] Not to change how people think I look. I'm fine with people thinking 'wow you're really femme.'[3]

[3] On his Monstrous Regiment tour, Terry Pratchett related a historical anecdote about people's willingness to take presentation on faith. A secretly female sailor had to take off her shirt for a flogging. The only comment was, "Tom's got awfully big tits for a man." That would work for me JUST FINE.

Behind a cut so arjache can avoid spoilers on my R&G writing. This danger has been averted.

Appropriate but incongruous song suggestions, please!

The context: in R&G Are Dead, a dumbshow rehearsal is interrupted by Hamlet and Ophelia running through doing the "To a nunnery" breakup scene. Ophelia is left crushed and sobbing on the stage.

That scene is being replaced in my version by a cabaret-themed montage scene. Appropriate influences:

• Ophelia interrupts the proceedings by coming on as the first murderess from Chicago (who opens the musical with an angry and manic All That Jazz, having just shot her lover and sister).
• The overall setting is the musical Cabaret.
• There will be elements of Moulin Rouge already in play, so something jarringly modern would be appropriate, if it can be spun into a torch song.

I request help from the hive mind in finding the best song to fit all these criteria. Please vote and or offer other suggestions! For all I know I am missing an entire category of appropriate songs.

[Poll #1958883]

I spent Sunday evening in the ER (my first time as an ER patient! I got a drip and everything!), and Monday and Tuesday lying very still on the train home and drinking a gallon of water a day.

I have antibiotics and an inhaler. I'm not sure if I have a secondary cold or if this is just my body's immune system making sure I know it's working very hard on whatever it is that burned my lungs.

I spent most of yesterday watching cartoons and coughing, occasionally productively. Today's forecast looks similar, except with a pounding headache, but I am on the mend.

R&G fanfiction writing took a little break yesterday, but I made good progress on the train!

I sleep now.

I've been doing the not-really-posting-anywhere but continuing to completely read LJ and skim a bit of Tumblr (with not very good friend overlap but I can't be bothered to fix it...) If you're on tumblr and want to go friend Gement I'll do my best to both friend back and actually start checking that account.

I actually currently do my skimming and very occasional reblobbing from my originally Homestuck-centric MeddlingGeminiform account. I don't post enough Homestuck stuff to feel like I need separate accounts at this point. Maybe I should give up on name unity between platforms and just tell everyone to friend MG, or delete the Gement one and rename the MG one, or... I don't know. Hi, I have trouble managing my social networks. Any opinions on which way I should play that one?

ETA: Please follow MeddlingGeminiform (that's a click-to-follow link). I will rename it Gement in a few days.

In other news I've been unemployed since the end of September which may or may not change soon, and I've been playing a lot of games on my phone which does not feel like where I want to direct my energy, but clicky-buttons.

I want to get back into playing the drawing games, those felt really fulfilling, but I've been anxiety-paralyzed about those for quite a while now. :/

Much more interesting bit:

I have been successfully writing Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead fanfiction, and I'm about half done with my giant ambitious thing, tentatively titled "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Magic"! If you're interested in sneak previews or consulting on plot points, do please comment on that. The general shape is a massive exploration of fanfiction culture, matching the beats of the original play and movie. All prompts, alternate settings suggestions, and "please do a crossover with X" appreciated. My notes document, which is separate from my draft, is 24 pages long, with lists like

• "Matching pairs of characters"


• "Possible dumbshow settings"


• "TV Tropes linkdump"


• "Stairs and hallways in movies"


• "Maudlin 90s songfic lyrics"

So yeah, come play!

I am moving. Soon. Like, real soon.

Like, into new place starting July 1, closing old place July 15.

MATHOM PARTY!

This Sunday, June 23, we haul up all the stuff we don't want but we think other geeks might want. You bring some of your stuff that you think other geeks might want. We all swap stuff, then haul away anything no one wanted.

No reservations required, but feel free to comment if you want to advertise your attendance. Snacks welcomed.

P.S. It's my birthday month and I have failed once again to throw a party, so if you would like to do something celebratory with/at me, consider this an opportunity, or at least an opportunity to poke me about setting up another date.