A Dancer For Our Time

Wow.

I was just scrolling through my Fcbk feed, when I saw this post of a video.  A woman was dancing ... it was one of the most gorgeous, energetic, athletic, graceful dancers I have ever seen.  Her name is Marta Bryła—don't ask me how to pronounce her last name—and when I searched on her name, she's described as a Polish actress.  She may be an actress, but she's the best at what she does: sort of highly expressive gymnastic dancing.

And her face!  It is truly the face of an angel.  I would have been so miserable if I had seen a second or two of her dance, and not seen the whole thing!  I'm going to try and get you a photo of her ...

OK, this photo captures her face very nicely.  It's a crazily expressive face, that's always scintillating through various—theatrical—emotions.  She was wearing a more conventional dance costume, a diaphanous dance dress, wearing which she did cartwheels and that sort of thing. 

It's her face with which I think I fell in love (not really; you know what I mean), though she definitely has the body of an angel.

Here's the video I saw: No time to Die.  In this dance, her face portrays mostly intense concentration, and the expression that most performers use to convey: "Pay attention now!"

Kay

An Idea for a New Character

Seeing how little progress I have made on the Elf story, this may not come to anything.  But, I'm thinking of a girl—maybe a little older, perhaps a woman—who loves animals. 

We probably all have a soft spot for animals—I certainly do!  But this girl has come to think that she loves animals more than her fellow-humans.  She doesn't want to be known to be an animal-lover; her town is being overrun by abandoned pets, and she fears that she might be persecuted for being animal- friendly. 

She has just two pets: a cat, and a dog.  The beginning of the story will be about how lonely she is.  Perhaps one of the pets is very old, and passes away, and her loneliness becomes almost unbearable. 

One of her characteristics (a unique feature) is her compassion.  She becomes furious at her fellow-citizens for creating this crisis of feral animals, and for her fear that drives her love for animals into hiding.  Every once in a while, she sees a litter of puppies, abandoned on the street, and she wants to rescue them, but public hostility to pets is so high that if she's seen, she'll be shunned. 

One day, she sees a woman, unconscious, on the side of the road.  This is different; helping people is still not seen as something as 'anti- social' as helping puppies.  She calls for help, and the woman is revived.  She tries to fade out of the picture, but the woman hunts her down, and expresses her gratitude. 

That's as far as I've got.  I've got some ideas, but they're still fairly vague!

Wow, I had forgotten that I had started a story about a lady professor at a college, whose boyfriend dies, leaving her his car.  But some company calls up and says that the car has to be returned.  The professor loses her temper, and drives off to California.

There's considerably more, but this story fragment is hard to summarize!

Kay

Butch Girls

I was going through my Deviant Art feed, and found that I was 'liking' mostly girls who were borderline butch.  I have nothing against this sort of girl, or woman really; it's not their 'butchness' or 'femmeness' that grabs my attention; I'm almost embarrassed to use those words—they seem to be words that were invented to help writers who focus on lesbian relationships in a sort of formulaic way.  I've met butch-style girls who are mean as hell, and other butch-style girls who are just adorable.  On the other hand, I've met femme women who are really cold and aloof, and other femmes who were really sweet.

I've recently begun a sort of regular activity, and there are guys and gals there, who are—for the most part—friendly and welcoming.  One of the women is an ultra-femme type girl, who always comes over and shares a smile and a friendly word.  I don't think she's looking for a relationship; she's in one already.  There are all types of women in the group—and guys, too—but hardly any romantic pairings. 

I'll stop here; I think I'll report some more on my observations once I have a few interesting ones to talk about!

Kay

P.S.  Kylie Welker!  This is a girl who wrestled for the University of Iowa ('Hawkeyes') team.  She looks totally adorable!  The best of luck, KW!

N.B. :  I don't mean to imply that Kylie is a butch at all!  That's her business completely, and I don't want to interfere with her life at all; life is hard enough for women, without the added complication of being—possibly erroneously—mistaken for someone who is queer. 

Deviant Art Images

Most of my readers know, by now, that I spend a certain amount of time on the website DeviantArt.  I initially went there with the intention of getting artwork for the covers of some of my books.  (And I succeeded; at least 5 of my covers are from DA artists.)

The usual arrangement on the site is to show visitors (or at least members) a series of images; you get to give each one a positive vote, or make a comment, or just scroll along.  But having been—however briefly—a professor, I just have to make a comment.  I can't make negative comments—that would be rude—so I get into this blog, and complain!

I'm now realizing, once again, that I'm thinking about the girls in the images—they're invariably girls—in terms of whether I like them as people, rather than whether they're beautiful images. 

This makes no sense whatever!  When we approve of the Mona Lisa, for instance, are we judging the painting as something Da Vinci painted, or as a prospective bride?  Or a picture of Aphrodite, say, as a work of art, or as an entry in a dating service?  This is a measure of how unprofessional I am as an art critic.

Actually, there is a tiny minority of women members who invariably post selfies 🤳.   I have made friends with a few of them, and they're nice people, but there are only a handful of them.  Often it's their boyfriends or partners (of either sex) who take the pictures; that's what I conclude from their pronouns being 'They, and Them'.

Finally, in the vast majority of cases, the images are neither paintings nor photographs, but images produced by AI apps.  So the connection to an actual person is very loose indeed!  It's rather desperate to have feelings for an AI- generated image.  To go a little further, this is what people on online dating sites are up against: Real, or AI?

Kay

P.S. Girl I could fall for <blush>: I know, that's a bit personal, but I guess it's too late now!

https://www.deviantart.com/kareguya/art/Umaima-1044520040

Pretty Girl Again

Well, they showed me a video of this girl; this time in an awesome 'Little Black Dress'.  Evidently Fb wants to see me in a LBD.  Actually, that would work for me. 

But I resent how stubbornly they keep after me. 

Never Fully Dressed

I rarely get a hook from a Broadway musical stuck in my brain, but I attended a musical review by a semi-professional band in our town, and—you shoulda guessed by now—a song they played is «You're never fully dressed without a smile!»

I've always loved this show, especially on video, and I loved the kids singing this song, particularly.  I wish I could attach an mp3 of the song to this post!  I mean: I easily can, but the strict copyright laws make it illegal. 

Kay

Untitled

Well ... I don't know what to say.  I saw this image on DeviantArt.

 

Its title was: "Bloe job eyes."

I looked at the image closely, and all I could see was a pretty, blue-eyed girl, looking very upset, it seemed to me.  The title, in addition, seemed very misogynistic.  But that's very common in this website; there is a significant number of 'members' who seem to get excited about anything that suggests bondage, or demeaning of women, or fantasizing about demeaning of men, by magically converting them into women, or keeping women imprisoned for sex use.

I'm so upset; there is a box I could check, to complain about the image, but all they would do is request that the picture be taken down. 

Embarassing!

I had undertaken to wash a small load of fabric for someone, when the washer started stuttering.  That's the best word for it; it would sound as though it's trying to do something, and failing.  I was staring at the washer—a ɓrand-new unit, too—but couldn't figure it out!  I tried some things,  e.g. pausing it, and putting it on just drain and spin.

I was just miserable; I was waiting for my life to end, when it quietly showed the "Done" light!  At least I wasn't making a fuss, like a drama queen. 

K

Another Reader

I just glanced (or 'glimpsed', as some weirdos say) at the sales/download statistics, and I saw that exactly one each of my books had been tallied.  What does this mean?  One person has decided to get one each of my books.  Why not?  They're mostly free, after all!

Love to all of you,

Kay

Eclipse

Huh.

I've seen a total eclipse before—or it may have been a partial eclipse.  But once I had seen it, had had a little insight into how it happened, I sort of stopped being excited by it.  I was watching my dad do bodywork on our rusty old family transport, and that seemed more exciting than the eclipse. 

This time I hardly paid any attention to the phenomenon.  I thought the photographs were great, and the coronas, and all that, but—not impressed. 

I think that I'm too much of a three-dimensional thinker to see the romance in it!  A major component of Romance is the strangeness of it; once it becomes familiar, it isn't romantic anymore. 

The process of two people falling in love, and discovering interesting facets about each other: that's fascinating, and oh so romantic!  So much so that I can re-read a story I've read before, and still make a fool of myself over how romantic it is!  Maybe once I get older, and worn down with life's woes, I'll stop going ga-ga over love and romance, but at the moment, it still hasn't happened.

I'm worried that my lack of interest in the eclipse may come between me and, well, you guys; once I start becoming unable to relate to what most people feel, it's sort of the beginning of the end.  There's no point in fighting it; I'll need to find something else to keep me going. 

Kay

Celebrity _Guys_ I Admire

I thought, since I've been carrying on about celebrity women I admire, I ought to make it clear that there are a few—just a very, very few—men that I admire, as well.  I had thought that there was absolutely no one, a guy, of whom I čould say, he's OK.  But dang, there is at least one, namely: Paul Rudd.

I watched the movie Clueless when it first came out, in a theatre with some of my friends, and it didn't immediately register that it was Paul Rudd.  Back then, he wasn't that well known.  It's only recently that it turns out that he has a sense of humor, and stuff like that!

He's really funny, IMHO, in fact one of the funniest guests on a Late Night Talk Show.  Ariana Grande is pretty funny, in fact lots of people are funny.

Oh, I almost forgot: I think Jack Black is funny, even if a little bit awkward!  He and Jimmy Fallon do a great job of making fun of those guys who sing "I already know".

Kay

Fast-Talking Celebrities, Caitlin Clark

Normally, the phrase fast-talking implies untrustworthy.  That's not what I intend here; I literally mean celebrities—usually on TV—who really talk fast. 

Seth Meyers.  If you've ever watched his late night show, you would have heard his high-speed monologue.  He talks super fast, and there have to be Seth fans who can barely figure out what he's saying!  I'd really like to transcribe one of his monologues, and figure the time-per-syllable rate.  It's gotta be through the roof.  (That won't endear him to Southerners, who talk really slow; but being a liberal, he's not going to alienate anyone new.)

Most of what he says is what I want to say, anyway, and I'm generally thankful to Seth for saying it.  He makes fun of Trump, and usually Trump does something funny every day, so Seth has enough material. 

Taylor Tomlinson.  My god, this woman is cute.  And she talks fast, fast, fast!  She talked about meeting Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter in the movies, and she tells Stephen Colbert that she barely held back blurting out that he got her through 5th Grade!  OMG, that's painfully cute!  (Wait a minute; that's scary close to how old I was ...).  The entire anecdote lasted less than 15 seconds. 

I'm a huge fan of J. K. Rowling; I think the Potterverse is a fantastic creation, and up there with Star Wars and Star Trek in terms of creativity.   (Tolkien's Middle Earth, I still think, is in a class by itself.  Call me elitist if you must.)

Kay

P.S.  I wish I could honestly say: How about that Caitlin Clark, eh?  I've never watched her playing, but that time I flew somewhere, I saw her on ESPN—or something similar—in the airport!  She has a lovely smile, and pretty hair.  And, man, she's tall!

 

She married Emperor Franz Joseph 1 of Austria when she was 16.  Sadly, it appears that she was preoccupied with her beauty regimen, and in Vienna often got so bored that she went into depression.

From the portrait (could be a photo; I'm not sure) she looks really attractive.  I'm not crazy about the royalty (except that I was, about Princess Diana) but this girl was clearly beautiful.  Evidently she never used cosmetics, which I find hard to believe. 

An Italian terrorist grabbed her while she was going about Geneva, and stabbed her to death.  A horrible way to die.  

In this portrait, it's clear that the woman had tons of beautiful hair, for which she was famous. 

Kay Hemlock Brown

A Dress

Something sad just happened to me. 

I saw a lovely dress on a Facebook ad.  Now, what do I do?   I so want to show that picture here, so that you guys see the kind of stuff I like!!!  But there are so many problems with doing that; copyright ... my desire to be incognito ...

Also, I'm sure I'm never going to fit into that dress; I've slimmed down a lot, but that dress is just too slim cut. 

I could steal it, and smooth it out so much that it's unrecognizable, and then you'd know what I don't look like!  Plan!

There it is.  I don't look anything like this girl, but I love the dress!  Left to my own devices, this is the sort of fabric I go for, but I have some very pushy friends who don't let me wear what I want to wear, so.

And if I got to change my face, that's the sort of face I would get.

P.S. The face looks a lot like Anne Hathaway.  I don't like looking like her, though she looks fairly attractive.  <Heavy sigh>  I really shouldn't get into the whole thing about whom I'd like to look like. 

Kay