Odds and Ends

After I had blogged about Barbie, I suddenly wanted to get several things off my chest.  (I'm glad I managed to be critical of the movie without completely dumping on it.  I think it will be an influential movie for years.  Greta Gerwig seems to be trying to nudge the degree to which a film makes demands of a movie audience in the direction of more.  But remember that we have to absorb the sense of the movie in real time!  The ability to do that depends on a number of things; if a moviegoer loves the movie enough to watch it a second time, it could make a huge difference in their understanding of the movie.)

I was looking for information about something on Google, when I came to the bulleted list of previous queries.  OMG.  Let me just say that the typical user of Google is quite unable to formulate a grammatical question.  Let's see whether I can get you a screenshot ...

Nuff said.

It's an interesting puzzle.  An ultra- conservative, or  Tea Partier would probably assume it is an immigrant; at any rate, it is certainly a question from someone whose native language is not English.  But this person is interested in a hymn—a Christmas hymn, in fact—and in locating it in "Methodist", the Methodist Hymnal, I would guess.  All he (or she) had to do is to look it up in the alphabetical index at the back! Is this person new to hymn-books?  It is a whole pile of interesting questions. 

To be fair, there's no basis to assume this person is a typical user of Google; in fact this was the second of several items of this sort, and the other items were phrased reasonably intelligibly.  (I don't want to sound ignorant, but as a teacher I know that confusion between 'intelligible' and 'intelligent' just has to be expected.  Intelligible means easy to read (if it is text, or easy to understand, if it is spoken).  Intelligent is probably what you think it means; I can't do a better job of defining that word. 

But wait, there's more!

Now, my Facebook feed has started showing me trivia about figure-skating as well!  This is how I learned about a Russian skater called Yulia "Sunny" Lipnitskaya.  This is a pint-sized beauty whom I'm half in love with!  My enthusiasm was greatly dampened when I saw a photo of her receiving a certificate from our good friend Putin, and when I read that she had given her blessing to her husband to go fight the Ukrainians.  I would have put up a photo of her (and her adorable little baby girl) if not for struggling so much with the blogger software.  OK; let me try ...

Sunny Lipnitskaya ❤️

(You probably think that she looks a little like me!  Actually, she looks like the fake picture I put up as my portrait, which in turn only looks a tiny bit like me.  I wouldn't mind looking like Yulia—now calling herself Julia—except that I'm liable to get looked up by Vladimir.)

Barbie

OK.

I thought Margot R. was excellent for the Barbie role.

I thought all the Barbies were cast beautifully, acted brilliantly, and were an awesome ensemble team. 

I think Ken did really well, but I couldn't comment on the role, because, honestly I couldn't really get my head around the plot.  This gender-roles thing makes sense to me, but at the upper echelons of the "Patriarchy" psycho-babble, I tend to lose my grasp of what they're saying. 

I thought America Ferreira was just perfect, and the girl who played her daughter was brilliant, but that could just be me thinking they were really cute. 

I really love Greta Gerwig, but I did not like her Little Women as much as I liked the Winona Rider film; maybe I haven't figured out the Calculus of the gender war really well.  To get into the advanced levels of the gender dialectic, you have to be able to understand certain arguments really fast, but I couldn't.  They were going by too fast for me to grab. 

That Kate McKinnon is beyond brilliant!  She could persuade me about anything!  Will Ferrell was excellent too, but he wasn't involved in advancing the argument at all; he was just a placeholder.

In the end, Greta G's plot was a little too complex for a movie audience to pick up on the fly, though it probably made sense for those who have been involved long term in the gender wars (which I haven't).  Even while I was dismayed by the failure of the plot of the movie, I was giggling at the comedy of the screen action!  It really is funny. 

I shudder to think that about fifty guys will want to pressure GG for the rights to the story with a view to doing a better job of it, and only succeed in screwing it into the ground.

Kay

An Observation ...

I stayed the night with friends.  As I was being dropped off, I noticed something; the roofs of some houses were adorned with dish antennas. 

I realized that TV was a large part of the entertainment of large chunks of the population.  Writers have been deploring this fact in the past, but I haven't seen much groaning about it in recent years.  In fact, when I'm forced to watch TV at the home of other people, I groan.  But obviously having a TV in the house is super important for lots of people.  In stories I read, some people just leave the TV on, but don't sit and watch it.  I, in contrast, have to scroll through various apps on my phone, often unsatisfied with what I see there.  (Of course there's always ballet reels on Facebook, and lesbians kissing on DA.  If you join DA, you won't necessarily be forced to watch pictures of lesbians kissing; I have been caught approving—or liking—these kissing pictures, and that's why I'm blessed with so many of them in my 'feed'.  Can't complain.) 

Kay.

P. S. : So anyway, DA is only showing me (1) Redheads, and (2) Lesbians, kissing.   It's a little like only eating ice cream all the time, you know?  My guess is that the guy (or gal) who maintained their algorithm asked for a raise, they got mad and fired him, and they replaced him with a part-timer who just continued with the basic, very basic, choices for each member.  I need my vegetables.  I need my fiber!  Oh man, nothing goes the way I want it ...

Kay

Another Two Pairs of Sound-Alikes

"Mel quickly returned from stuffing the garbage (bag) down the shoot."

Most of my readers probably know that, what an apartment-building dweller stuffs their garbage bag down is not a 'shoot', but a 'chute'.  Chute is also the word you use for one of those slides kids go down, at a kids' playground.  And there are "Chutes and Ladders," the game, and so on. 

The sentence was taken from an excellent book that I'm 📚 reading.  There is even an adorable seven-year-old who's on the spectrum, and a trans person, and someone who's non-binary.  The 'them' pronoun is a pain, though I see why some people prefer it <sigh>.

Snow!

We're having a steady, fine fall of snow, the kind that skiers like.  The sky is relentlessly leaden, so that it's gloomy. 

Talking about skiing, there are so many things I ought to have gotten Helen to do, and one of them is skiing.  I should have sent her to a ski slope, and had her break a leg!

Another thing she could have done is Karaoke!  I mean, the woman can sing, so why not?

She swims, in the Flowershop Girl story, but just incidentally.  In the original Helen story, I had her buy a swimsuit that was see-through when wet—she was a horny teenager at that time—and have a big argument with Janet about it. 

The best was when she and Leila danced wearing only paint and flowers, at Leila's mother's nightclub.  I took these episodes out before I published the stories. 

Oh ... My ... God ...

DeviantArt is the limit.

When I get bored, there are a few places I go: FaceBook, email, and DA.  The latter, because I like to look at pretty women; there's no point in being coy with you, my readers, because you know how I am.  I try to be inconspicuous when I'm out and about with friends, but ... Oh!  I figured, in the privacy of my own home ...

It all goes to show that there's no privacy anymore.  DA has—obviously—noticed that I like to look at pictures of women.  I ascribed the lack of guy pics to, naturally, the preponderance (there I go again with my left-wing vocabulary) of male members on the site.

But now, they're showing me, almost exclusively, pictures of two women kissing!  Well, I  think I must have liked a lesbian kiss one time too many, and now I'm labeled a 'lesbian kiss lover,' and that's all I'm going to be shown!!

On the face of it, there's no problem; commercial-minded artists (and I think that's most of them, on DA) create whatever they think people like.  But I happen to know that straight girls don't like to pose as lesbians.  They just don't, just as lesbians don't like to pose as straight.  For some girls, sure: it's not a problem; they'll do anything.  It's just a job.  But it's ... I just don't know; getting categorized this way feels like an invasion of privacy, really. 

And another thing: in some pictures of girls kissing, it seems to me as though the girls are really into it, you know?  I think I can tell.  In other pics, they're just kissing, like, a sisterly kiss, or kissing a BFF.  Most annoying is that guy artists don't seem to be even trying to convey a little more authenticity. 

On the other hand, if a pair of models actually were lesbians, and if they actually happen to be a couple, let's say; there's a good chance that they would not be on board to display their private feelings for a commercial purpose.  They just do a kiss, a moderately convincing one, and get it over with. 

Maybe I'm overthinking this, and these are very private matters, and everybody's different.  But something I've tried to do is to set aside my hangups when I'm writing, to add a little more persuasion to my work.  But my romantic writing is, I know, just a little wooden.  I tend to be a tiny bit removed—like recalling intimacy from sometime in the past—so that it isn't as immediate as it should be.  Anyway ... what's to be done. 

Writing About Fern

Fern is, you might not know, the name of the elf in my half-written story.  The human girl is Lauren; a black girl, an orphan, well-educated, a tax accountant.

I just read several pages from the manuscript, and I had put so much feeling into the story that it was affecting me very strongly.  Lauren—like most of us—had been brought up to reject all sorts of superstition.  But Fern had some powerful tricks up her sleeve: she could read Lauren's mind; not just casually, but with some effort.  She could influence Lauren's mood; she could adjust her appearance.  And she was beautiful.  So Lauren was twisted up in knots, and she had had trouble enough to believe that Fern existed in the first place ...

As they gradually fall in love, Lauren learns that this is an irreversible process.  In fact, Fern says that if she had known that Lauren existed, she would have set out from her home, and found Lauren, and ...  I had never before written a love story that had so epic a structure (though Prisoner comes close), and I just may not be up to it.  Actually, I have a 'page' with a lot of the story, I think ...

Yes, I do; it's called The Girl with the Pretty Eyebrows. 

Kay

P.S. :

Speaking of Prisoner, I have an idea about how to continue with that.  The way I left that is, the princess's homeland is invaded by a strange army of giant people, and Maia and the green princess, and the healer couple, husband and wife, slip away, and go to the healer couple's home country.  From there, Maia and the green princess make their way to Maia's home city.  They somehow have to get the people organized, and establish something like a government.  Maia feels not up to the task, but the princess speaks sternly to her, and insists that it is Maia's responsibility. 

I thought that the logical next phase of the story would be to have the Blue Princess, Tatiana, head back towards her former home country, as planned, only to find that the giants have settled in in a new fortress, some distance from the old fortified city.  The princess, the guard Peder, and Peder's wife Neela study the situation, hidden from the giants. 

A enormous number of (former) residents of the city are hidden in the hills, having watched the giants for some months.  They need to come down to meet the Blue Princess, and let them know what has happened. 

This sounds like the plot of an Edgar Rice Burroughs story!  It can't be helped; that's what it is already!

Kay H-B

I'm Old-Fashioned!

My parents were old-fashioned; all through school I was totally unhip, and hung out with older kids, and even teachers; the same happened all through college.  (In fact it was a former professor of mine who encouraged me to write.  You can imagine how I cringed when I learned that he'd read my manuscript!  I mean, if I had been a guy, that would have been fine, but being a queer woman—Oh Lord, I'm so glad that couldn't happen again.)  Also, the friends I chose to keep company with were old-fashioned, and listened to the music of the '40's through the'60's, so I'm familiar with old-time Country and Western (both Country and Western, as the guy says on The Blues Brothers).  (This is obviously all of a piece with my interest in classical music.)

Just today, I posted a journal entry on DeviantArt, about my tastes in (graphic) art, but I think one of the DA managers has to check out whether it's up to their standards.  (<snort.>)  The post emphasizes what would be called old time values. 

Like Helen (my OC), I prefer to wear dresses than pants, but sometimes I make the mistake of looking in a mirror, and quickly change clothes.  Anyhoo ...

A song that just popped into my mind is "End of the World", by Skeeter Davis.  She was a musical powerhouse of her time, and recorded several songs that Donny and Marie Osmond later made famous in the seventies.  Skeeter's family name was actually 'Penick', but she sang duets with a girl called Jack Davis, and they called themselves the Davis Sisters.  Jack was killed in a car crash, but 'Skeeter' (basically derived from 'mosquito') kept the name Davis. 

The words of the song End of the World are simple: Why is the world still going on as usual, even after you stopped loving me?  It is a classical theme, even found in classical poetry; guys and gals for centuries have said the same.  (Unless I'm mistaken, Juliet says something a little like that when she wakes up from a drugged sleep to find Romeo lying dead on her —Juliet's—bier.)

Gosh, I can't think why I decided to write on this subject.  But if you have the energy, search on YouTube for The E.O.T.W, and see what you think!

Kay

I'm Too Old For This

Youth culture is—well, let's just say that I'm losing my grip on it.  On DA, at least, the women are looking sluttier every day, but I know beyond a doubt that it's men who put up the images, and they seem to prefer slutty images.

A lot of the people I admire still dress beautifully, smartly, attractively; but a lot of the women seem to follow along with the crowd and the fashions, even when some of the elements of current fashion are in really bad taste.  I wasn't watching the Golden Globes (has it been held yet?  I don't even know), so I'm speaking from what I see on Facebook and so on.  The biggest survival skill I must learn is: to focus on the things that are pleasing to me, and to ignore the rest.  Someday, that will come easy to me, but at the moment, a lot of things make me cringe!

What people do in private doesn't bother me a great deal.  There are 'stories' on DeviantArt that describe casual incest.  I have written stories that have incest, but they are not in the least casual; in fact they cause a certain degree of trauma—ultimately to all the concerned parties.  But we don't need to know everything that people do in private; that's the point.  A little intimacy, to establish the progress of a relationship—that's not inappropriate.  But an entire story based on sex, that borders on pornography.  (Porn is creeping into commercial mainstream fiction as a genre.  I guess that was inevitable.)

After the turmoil of the 80's and the 90's, I was hoping that fashions and styles of the two sexes would converge.  That guys could wear skirts just as much as women could wear pants.  But that did not suit the fashion designers; they would lose revenue, you see?  A few brave guys—bless them—wore skirts.  At first, just kilts.  Then they went on to wrap skirts of all sorts.  But the trends are changing; guys don't seem to feel welcome among the skirt-wearing population.

At first, I noticed that girls' fashions were growing more and more elaborate and fussy.  Hair-styles were the fussiest of all; braids here, curls there, ornaments, back-combing ... Very few female portraits on DA showed a natural-looking girl.  (And, of course, they were nude, or in their underwear.  That's a time-hallowed tradition from when Art was produced by guys, for guys.) Things have to settle down sooner or later. 

Another interesting phenomenon is that young people just love to dance!  There's nothing wrong with dancing; it's just that I never got into dancing, and I find it hard to relate to it, while at the same time I really admire girls who can do a little dance, just to express themselves!  A lot of what goes on in TikTok, I understand, is dancing.  Girls who regularly dance like this must keep in shape.  (Unfortunately, a lot of young people aspire to be influencers, which is a little like getting into politics, but with the explicit motive of making money.)

Kay Hemlock Brown

[Just making sure that all who read this blog know that how I have signed this post—Kay Hemlock Brown—is only a pen-name.  'Kay Brown' may or may not be distantly related to my true name, but 'Hemlock' is completely from out of left field.  In fact, the inspiration for Hemlock came from the muppet Sherlock Hemlock, who was a character on Sesame Street!  In fact, one of my favorites. —Kay]

Happy 2024!

Well, it's snowing in Central Pennsylvania, which I certainly don't mind!  It's the absence of snow that I object to; I'm sure those who live at the top of a steep hill in the country would much rather live in a climate that's dry all the time, but as for me, a little judicious sprinkling of snow is very welcome indeed. 

This promises to be a very busy year, not least because President Biden is likely to be opposed—at the polls—by Donald Trump, who is not only a scofflaw, but also a publicity hound.  As for myself, though I recognize that maintaining this Blog can be seen as a plot to obtain publicity, in my case I trickle out the publicity in a measured stream, just enough for anyone who stumbles into this site to feel welcome. 

Of the other candidates competing for the Republican nomination, Chris Cristie is the one most able to take an intelligent, rational position.  He's a bit vindictive, as in one occasion on which he punished some president—was it Bill Clinton?—for some action, and closed down the George Washington Bridge.  But face it: any one of the candidates could have done such a thing. 

Nikki Haley, of late, has seemed reasonable, but her attitude towards Trump has been inconsistent. 

Vivek Ramaswamy seems to be a loose cannon. 

Ron DeSantis seems to be dancing a complicated tango with the various components of the GOP, taking stands based on how well they go over, rather than based on his convictions.  He's insincere, I guess is what I'm struggling to say. 

Compared to these, at least we know what Donald Trump stands for; his dissembling is amateurish, at best.  And I have to admit that I have never liked him, and not just because of political reasons.

In the end, we will get the President we deserve, abominable. unless we work hard to persuade our friends to come out and vote, we will be very sad. 

[Abdominal???  I don't have any idea what I intended to say there; can't even guess!  Except that it's disappointing ...]

Kay, feeling irrationally cheerful. 

Missy Franklin: She Walks in Beauty

Missy Franklin is this beautiful woman, who is at present the winner of the most gold medals in swimming of practically anyone.  She was a swimming goddess, and her achievements will last some years.   But the Rio Olympics of 2016 (did I get that right?) hurt her shoulder muscles, so she announced that she would retire from swimming, and concentrate on being a mother. 

Missy with her Baby!  Cuteness overload!!

I have to confess that what draws me to this woman is not her athletic ability, but her absolutely dazzling smile 😍.  You can't have a smile like that without having a heart of gold!  Apparently she loves to dance (which sets her apart from me), and she is said to have challenged the man to whom she's married presently by challenging him to a dance-off!  I like her style. 

She looks close to tears in this image

I would encourage her to work from home, while she is a mother to her baby; but I don't have a leg to stand on, being a totally idle person myself!