Mangela Lansbury

These are always heartbreaking to watch, not only for the obvious reasons but because you know that someone out there is bragging about making him cry and laughing about how he deserved it and generally being a reprehensible sack of hot, wet garbage.

Part of what I do right now involves going through Chinese school documents. A lot of them send in something called Certificate of A Student, and every time I read that phrase I just think of a mid-90s romcom starring a British guy who never buttons his shirt all the way and a strong independent woman with zero agency in the narrative. I should go into film production.

Yeah, Michelle Yeoh! I mean, she's not A-List in America but from what I hear she's pretty A-Listy in China, or was a little while back? And she's most known for her kung fu? It's just a feeling I get from some Taiwanese friends I had before I moved. So it depends on where you are maybe!

Zhang Ziyi? She's definitely niche in America and I have no idea what her status in China is, but her breakout role was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and I think that's all I've ever seen her do... Then there's the other Chinese kung fu actress who only really had terrible roles in America but was pretty A list in China whose name I can't remember but she was the one in Tomorrow Never Dies. So I guess it depends on your definition of A-List again.

As someone who's said something about terrible culture and been removed from a temp job -- guess who also has very little to no legal recourse if they're fired for saying "No, it's not okay that you do X or let Y happen." (Hint: Contract employees) It's shitty that you're in a situation where you just have to tolerate such dehumanizing and disrespectful nonsense. I'm sorry you have to put up with it because of things beyond your control.

It looks like the case is just under the Alien Tort Claims Act, so money. Like all incredibly exciting law, that looks like it's just been a lot of bickering about jurisdiction until now. I think it's kind of beautiful that a group that abbreviates to SMUG is trying to sue such a smug asshole.

That strongly resembles a few things I recommended for a AAFF, so your life is pretty incredible by my measure.

I endorse this endorsement.

So, this job ended up being a no go. There was no way to make it work. BUT, I still have the option to add a full time job on top of my full time job and the various other things I do to make life work. It would basically be chronicling a history of queer life in Detroit during and after the AIDS epidemic for not nearly enough to do it, but it's something I am incredibly passionate about. I don't know if it would be something that would just add stress to my life or something I could thrive on, though. I know enough about the academic landscape that I could get a decent start, but I don't know enough about the methodologies involved that I'm 100% sure that I could carry it out. Basically, I'm stuck in a weird place with the university I quasi-work for: Do I commit to something I'm not sure I could follow through on just on the hope that passion is enough, or do I pass because someone else would serve that money better and I'm already doing enough to get by?

I baked up some crickets tonight -- one batch just straight up and one batch with honey and chili powder. Crickets are delicious. They're gonna be my new protein after a workout. I really strongly recommend anyone who thinks they can take the idea of eating a cricket to maybe order some -- I paid $10 for a pretty good amount, so they're not pricey. And they're not hard to prepare. I just baked them at 200 for about an hour, then rolled them to remove the legs and antennas.

Maybe they'll call for an NBC boycott, then when NBC's ratings continue to be anemic they'll just call it a victory.

I like being barefoot, so I like them. They let me be barefoot-adjacent and not worry about dying. If you don't like going barefoot, you will not like them. I don't buy a lot of the health and wellness hype around them. I just like the way they feel. My big toes are a little big, but they stretched. Also, cut your toenails or be ready for a world of pain.

I hate preparing potatoes at all. I've mashed them once, maybe. I'm assuming that, but I don't remember exactly when it was. And the top of cottage pie (mashed potatoes on top of meat) being crunchy can be primo.

I keep confusing Friedrich Hayek and Salma Hayek in my head, so I'm just going to give in and believe Salma Hayek is a renowned economist and Friedrich Hayek does a pole dance in that one zombie movie. I've worn a lot of boots since moving north. If you need those, just look for sturdy construction and quality material -- thicker leather if you go that route, durable stitching, and no abnormalities where the sole of the shoe meets whatever the rest of the shoe is called. No suede boots have ever lasted my roommate more than one season. And part of making shoes last is taking care of them. Polish leather shoes, keep cloth clean and dry, etc. My roommates make fun of me for sitting with a toothbrush and cleaning sneakers while I watch TV, but my shoes usually last for a looooong time.

On the flip side, I have Merrell clogs that are pretty much just house slippers/run to the dumpster shoes and wouldn't be good for much else.

I, for one, think you need to have seen the Lumiere brothers complete works before you can say absolutely anything about film. And you need to watch the entirety of Battleship Potemkin to truly appreciate the 80s action movie montage. And I just don't understand how you can appreciate a show like the Office without having seen I Am Curious (both blue AND yellow, mind you) along with, say, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm and other parodic representations of the cinema verite documentary heritage. Elitism about film is pretty dumb is the point I'm getting at.

I'm working in college admissions right now (the person who admitted you to forge might have been an underpaid temp, fyi), and some of the recommendations I'm reading are really, really infuriating. This morning, there was a letter of recommendation where the counselor at an expensive boarding school gushed that this applicant was just inhumanly kind because his brother, 5 years older than him, is gay. That's it. Because someone 5 years older than him is gay, this kid is really brave and strong and it's so good of him to have dealt with the hardship of having a gay older sibling in moneyed circles in New York. On its own, that would just make me roll my eyes, but the applicant's statement on a hardship he faced in life is entirely about his gay older sibling. 750 words about how his brother was generally well accepted by everyone around him, but it was really hard that he was gay. I obviously can't go into specific details, but it's pretty terrible. These kinds of statements and letters aren't all that rare, and it's going to give me an aneurysm. Is it wrong of me to get so frustrated by this or am I being unreasonable by underestimating how difficult it can be to have a gay sibling/friend/uncle/neighbor?

Just because I've been reading up on it lately and it's kind of interesting, something like LGBT rights were mostly heralded by the anarchists in the late 1800s/early 1900s, with people like Alexander Berkman personally documenting his transition into accepting homosexual love in some memoirs he wrote while in prison. The Bolshevik revolution led to the abolition of all sex crimes in Russia somewhere in the early 1920s with prominent women like Alexandra Kollontai championing free love with some success before Stalin came in and did his Stalin thing. Or there's Mujeres Libres, a libertarian/anarchist feminist group that was active in Spain around the civil war. Two of those aren't American movements, but even if you limit yourself to American movements you find things like the Mattachine Society, a gay rights group from the 50s that was founded by a member of the Communist Party of America (who was later basically blackballed by the communist party for it, buuuuuuuut whatever).

To be clear, I stayed silent in the moment, but the conversation I watched happen colored my perception of the movie both because it was so different from what I thought and because it happened in the lobby of the theater while waiting for people to get out of the bathroom. When I brought up that I had been uncomfortable and tried to work out why with a third party, I got called out hard. I think this whole callout thing is incredibly nuanced, and it necessarily has to be considered in its specific context. I think the majority of toxic callouts are ones that are more just a call to shut the fuck up based on identity politics than they are a way to continue a discussion, even if it would change into a different discussion. It's not that calling people out is inherently toxic, it's just that I see it used a lot as a way to just end a discussion or to discourage someone from talking about something, which definitely is toxic. That is largely about the reaction to being called out, but I don't think that makes it entirely about the person doing the reacting. (Typed this on my phone while taking my lunch break walk, sorry if it's disjointed and full of autocorrect weirdness)

I had a conversation with someone after I saw Dear White People. They asked me what I thought of it, and of course the conversation went to reactions to the movie, so I brought up how uncomfortable it made me that the black guy who I went with said the movie was ridiculous because that kind of overt racism just doesn't exist anymore. I stayed quiet in that moment and just let myself be uncomfortable for a while, but it left an impression on how I think about the movie now. This still seems like a reasonable thing to me all around, but my friend called me out for silencing the voice of a person of color and discounting their opinion and trying to erase their viewpoint by talking over them and so on, which, I don't know, maybe I was doing that, but I just avoid talking about the movie now because I was told that the way I talked about it was just aggressively stupid. So there's one example, I guess?

I keep checking back for poop jokes and I just keep being disappointed.

Thanks! I not only went, I talked to three whole strangers! One was the author while I was getting the book signed, but at least the others count. EDIT: oh gosh, megaspel. that blows hardcore. I've learned the hard way (repeatedly) to always be wary of freelance work at the start. I'll be hoping for the best for you.

I made challah with my cricket powder! It was a little dense, so I'll have to figure that out if I make it again, but the flavor was really good. The cricket powder added a kind of nutty flavor, so it was just honey nut bread. Next attempt: Pancakes! Just can't decide if I want to try some kind of savory pancake -- like a crepe batter that's even more finicky or a Korean pancake -- or just do good ole breakfast...

I'm doing this stupid self help stuff to try and improve parts of myself and my life that have room for growth. Tonight, I'm making myself go to a book launch/reading for a local author and hoooopefully won't chicken out of trying to have a conversation with a stranger. It's nice to have something to stress out about that isn't job related!

what do you do when you're offered a job that is basically your dream job, but it pays nowhere near enough for you to pay your bills