I might not have anything to say about Janet Jackson's boob after this

This is the problem with the puritanical sexual obsessives . . . [to them,] a naked nipple is just as bad as a forced bondage S&M act involving Carrot Top.
--mattapp, 3 Feb 2003

Okay, one more: WNYC's Brian Lehrer is now comparing Janet Jackson's nipple to Howard Dean's scream. It's a good comparison, in the sense of "How could any sane person care enough about this to be angered?" (Which is the point he's making, I hasten to add.)

(My "mood" was supposed to be a link to this Usenet article I posted years ago, but it didn't work properly.)

On Writing

Neil Gaiman talks about how he knew he wanted to be a writer, in the process of encouraging someone who failed to qualify for a creative writing course to not believe that that was the end of his/her chances of "becoming a writer".

It does help, to be a writer, to have the sort of crazed ego that doesn't allow for failure. The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering "Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!" and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there's nothing left to write.

He also links to a wonderful tnh post on Making Light discussing the mechanisms of rejection.

What these guys have failed to understand about rejection is that it isn't personal. If you’re a writer, you're more or less constitutionally incapable of understanding that last sentence, if you think there’s any chance that it applies to you and your book; so please just imagine that I'm talking about rejections that happen to all those other writers who aren't you.

My old blood is pure nerd. My new blood, I'm not so sure.

57.142857142857146% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

(The older the subject matter of the question, the more likely I was to get the answer right.)

Noodling about emotions

A friend of mine made a private LJ post about emotions, which asked, in effect, whether one can choose one's emotions or whether they are uncontrollable.

Here's what I said in response. As I say, it's noodling rather than a Manifesto.

"Emotions" are brain responses to outside stimuli. These responses shape both one's thoughts and one's physical reactions--fear makes the heart race, lust makes the genitals flush. And so forth.

It's clear to me that emotions are, at least in part, habitual responses. Just as you can train yourself to different habits, you can train yourself to have different emotional responses to situations.

So, to that degree, you can choose your emotions.

However, one does not necessarily "choose" one's emotional responses. Many emotional responses start from a biological brain-track--fear of reptiles seems hard-wired into the human brain to a degree completely disproportionate to the actual dangers of reptiles. And habits are often forced upon you by your previous life. Not in the reincarnation sense, but in the sense that the decisions you make and experiences you undergo earlier in life will shape your current life in ways that your current self does not control.

So your immediate emotional response right now is probably not yours to choose, although what you do with that emotional response right now generally is. Not universally, I would say--there are some emotional responses which are so strong, or so ingrained, that they can overcome any attempt to redirect them in the here-and-now. To the degree that psychotherapy works, it is about the long process of changing one's habitual emotional responses.

But considering that there are people walking around right now who actively crave to be beaten with whips until they bleed, I'd say it's pretty clear that the mind can do amazing things in reframing emotional responses to stimuli.

Thus, you can have it both ways, and some others on top.

First Ladies and Reactionaries

Brilliant article about Ms. Dr. Judy Steinberg, a.k.a. "Mrs. Howard Dean", courtesy of The Nation's Katha Pollitt.

The ongoing public inquest into Dr. Judith Steinberg makes me see, however, that we need First Ladies: Without them, American women might actually believe that they are liberated, that modern marriage is an equal partnership, that the work they are trained for and paid to do is important whether or not they are married, and that it is socially acceptable for adult women in the year 2004 to possess distinct personalities--even quirks! Without First Ladies, a woman might imagine that whether she keeps or changes her name is a private, personal choice, the way the young post-post-feminists always insist it is when they write those annoying articles explaining why they are now calling themselves Mrs. My Husband.

(link courtesy of supergee.)

It's clear that the comportment of the First Lady is the last unfettered playground of the reactionary movement.

The nutbag American right-wing hated Bill Clinton with a burning passion for two reasons, and I've never been sure which of them was the more important.

One source of hatred was that his marriage with Hillary was everything the reactionaries feared--that Bill and Hill didn't understand the proper roles of men and women, which are, respectively, for men to pay false tribute to traditional marriage roles while getting it on the side but not getting caught, and for women to completely subordinate their own identities into the role of "wife".

The other source of hatred was because Clinton was a nigger-lover. (That exact phrase showed up in Hillary's Living History, and also in one of the major documentary books on Whitewater and the Arkansas Project, but I can't find it on the web.)

The reactionary wing in America believes that it really should be 1955 again, when women and blacks and faggots and kikes knew their places and stayed in them. That's what the "culture wars" are all about. Choose a side, because one will be chosen for you if you don't.

States Visited

I only counted states to which I travelled by my own choice. I'm not sure precisely what states I visited when I was very young.

( Nice clustering )

Attention, nigelpuggle

nigelpuggle, would you be so kind as to bring this post to your human mommy's attention?

has anyone ever used a neti pot?

asks sdn.