Why do them Judies love me so?
I hate shopping. Books are one thing, clothes are the Devil, and while I had planned to deal with the Devil in carefully planned increments after Readercon, in reality I spent most of that time dealing with my health instead and since I leave for Providence on Wednesday, that left today as Hell.
Most of the day was, in fact, terrible. But I have ended it the owner of one pair of honest-to-God one-hundred-percent-cotton heavy-weight jeans with pockets I can actually get my hands into and one pair of blue-black corduroy cargo pants whose plethora of high-waisted pockets simultaneously recalls photographs of 1940's munitions workers and dorsal and caudal fins.
I got them from a store on Newbury Street called Brandy Melville which I only walked into because they had jeans in the window. I expected to receive exactly the same regretful negative I had gotten from the previous three stores I had similarly cold-queried about non-stretchy jeans, especially when I saw that the clientele appeared to consist almost strictly of teenage girls, either in groups or accompanied by mothers who looked to be my age. Everywhere else I had looked so far—an entire mall and the aforementioned three stores on Newbury Street, which might have been a more impressive number if I had had a greater quantity of cope left by that point in the day, but there had been a mall—had either offered stretchy jeans only or their hundred percent cotton had been artfully distressed in ways that made the jeans utterly useless as well as aesthetically repellent to me. When the sales clerk by the fitting room told me that most of their jeans were no-stretch, I collected an armful and prepared to be demoralized.
The first thing I tried was the cargo pants and they just fit. The second thing I tried was the pair of jeans I bought. The third, fourth, and fifth things did not fit me, but they did not fit me in different ways, which at least suggests that this chain recognizes the existence of more than one body type. I regret a little that their style in black denim had a just slightly wrong waist-to-hip ratio, since it had even better pockets and my last pair of black jeans disintegrated over fifteen years ago, but frankly I had not expected to leave the store with one pair of pants, let alone two. And they did not cost the earth. Which was not my experience of the mall or the other stores on Newbury Street, either. I keep feeling there must be a catch, especially since I have so repeatedly invoked the Devil, but both pairs seem well-constructed and neither smells of brimstone. Is this what it's like to be catered to? And it happened at an Italian store that markets to teenagers, yet.
Later in the evening I sorted old familial jewelry with my mother and came up with a pair of suitable chains so that I can wear both of the pendants by Elise Matthesen that I am bringing to NecronomiCon, the abalone-and-gold-wire "The Secret Language of Water" and the labradorite-and-silver-wire "Was Ice, Am Ocean." I have also inherited a pendant from my grandmother that my mother always thought should come to me; it is a cloudy, swirly carving of pale green jade on a green silk cord and I remember her wearing it, though less often than the pink jade or the strands of rose quartz. I do not know if I will bring it to the convention. I do not customarily wear a lot of jewelry, but I am not customarily a Poet Laureate, and I feel I should dress accordingly. I regret somewhat more not being able to locate a fancy vest, but I suspect my idea of a fancy vest went out with the nineteenth century.
I would really like about three days of nothing before I hit a convention at which I am expected to be brilliant for hours starting in the mornings, but it isn't going to happen. Have some links that accumulated recently.
1. Art Spiegelman on golden age superheroes and the context of rising fascism. Regarding the circumstances of the essay's publication: I cannot actually hear the word "apolitical" without flashing straight to Tom Lehrer.
2. I liked this piece a lot: Lucy Biederman, "An Essay into the Poetry of Mrs. Celia Dropkin." I also like the poetry of Celia Dropkin.
3. I glanced off this paper on Tumblr some time back and then could remember neither the author nor the title, which made it surprisingly but also hilariously difficult to find again: Dennis Upper, "The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of 'writer's block'" (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Fall 1974).
4. Courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer: Hittite memes.
5. I recommend reading all of the poems of the 1619 Project.
I am not really of the community to feel recognized and validated by AO3's Hugo win, but I still think it's pretty neat. Jeannette Ng and Likhain, I am just happy about.
Most of the day was, in fact, terrible. But I have ended it the owner of one pair of honest-to-God one-hundred-percent-cotton heavy-weight jeans with pockets I can actually get my hands into and one pair of blue-black corduroy cargo pants whose plethora of high-waisted pockets simultaneously recalls photographs of 1940's munitions workers and dorsal and caudal fins.
I got them from a store on Newbury Street called Brandy Melville which I only walked into because they had jeans in the window. I expected to receive exactly the same regretful negative I had gotten from the previous three stores I had similarly cold-queried about non-stretchy jeans, especially when I saw that the clientele appeared to consist almost strictly of teenage girls, either in groups or accompanied by mothers who looked to be my age. Everywhere else I had looked so far—an entire mall and the aforementioned three stores on Newbury Street, which might have been a more impressive number if I had had a greater quantity of cope left by that point in the day, but there had been a mall—had either offered stretchy jeans only or their hundred percent cotton had been artfully distressed in ways that made the jeans utterly useless as well as aesthetically repellent to me. When the sales clerk by the fitting room told me that most of their jeans were no-stretch, I collected an armful and prepared to be demoralized.
The first thing I tried was the cargo pants and they just fit. The second thing I tried was the pair of jeans I bought. The third, fourth, and fifth things did not fit me, but they did not fit me in different ways, which at least suggests that this chain recognizes the existence of more than one body type. I regret a little that their style in black denim had a just slightly wrong waist-to-hip ratio, since it had even better pockets and my last pair of black jeans disintegrated over fifteen years ago, but frankly I had not expected to leave the store with one pair of pants, let alone two. And they did not cost the earth. Which was not my experience of the mall or the other stores on Newbury Street, either. I keep feeling there must be a catch, especially since I have so repeatedly invoked the Devil, but both pairs seem well-constructed and neither smells of brimstone. Is this what it's like to be catered to? And it happened at an Italian store that markets to teenagers, yet.
Later in the evening I sorted old familial jewelry with my mother and came up with a pair of suitable chains so that I can wear both of the pendants by Elise Matthesen that I am bringing to NecronomiCon, the abalone-and-gold-wire "The Secret Language of Water" and the labradorite-and-silver-wire "Was Ice, Am Ocean." I have also inherited a pendant from my grandmother that my mother always thought should come to me; it is a cloudy, swirly carving of pale green jade on a green silk cord and I remember her wearing it, though less often than the pink jade or the strands of rose quartz. I do not know if I will bring it to the convention. I do not customarily wear a lot of jewelry, but I am not customarily a Poet Laureate, and I feel I should dress accordingly. I regret somewhat more not being able to locate a fancy vest, but I suspect my idea of a fancy vest went out with the nineteenth century.
I would really like about three days of nothing before I hit a convention at which I am expected to be brilliant for hours starting in the mornings, but it isn't going to happen. Have some links that accumulated recently.
1. Art Spiegelman on golden age superheroes and the context of rising fascism. Regarding the circumstances of the essay's publication: I cannot actually hear the word "apolitical" without flashing straight to Tom Lehrer.
2. I liked this piece a lot: Lucy Biederman, "An Essay into the Poetry of Mrs. Celia Dropkin." I also like the poetry of Celia Dropkin.
3. I glanced off this paper on Tumblr some time back and then could remember neither the author nor the title, which made it surprisingly but also hilariously difficult to find again: Dennis Upper, "The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of 'writer's block'" (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Fall 1974).
4. Courtesy of
moon_custafer: Hittite memes.5. I recommend reading all of the poems of the 1619 Project.
I am not really of the community to feel recognized and validated by AO3's Hugo win, but I still think it's pretty neat. Jeannette Ng and Likhain, I am just happy about.
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If you're ever looking for more non-stretch jeans, I've had good luck with the "Uniqlo U" line, which tends to be 100% cotton. For instance: https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/women-u-wide-fit-curved-jeans-422414.html
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I saw and loved it on Tumblr too, and I just followed the link to reread and noticed with a wild surmise the hyperlinked words "This article has been cited by other articles in PMC." Indeed it has, and they're beautiful:
1. "Very little is known about the transcriptional regulation of gene expression in diatoms (Upper 1974)."
Bromke, Mariusz A, and Holger Hesse. “Phylogenetic analysis of methionine synthesis genes from Thalassiosira pseudonana.” SpringerPlus vol. 4 391. 4 Aug. 2015, doi:10.1186/s40064-015-1163-8.
2. "Since its initial publication [25], no comprehensive description [104] of the Vienna RNA Package has appeared." [Footnote 104 simply cites the original article.]
Lorenz, Ronny et al. “ViennaRNA Package 2.0.” Algorithms for molecular biology : AMB vol. 6 26. 24 Nov. 2011, doi:10.1186/1748-7188-6-26.
3. This one's a replication study.
From the editor's notes below the article:
"The consistency between the editorial opinion of the action editor, Linda LeBlanc, whose reviewer comments are enclosed verbatim parenthetically here ( ) and this paper is equally remarkable."
and then
"Preparation of this article was supported by a grant of $2.50 from the first author's personal funds."
Didden, Robert et al. “A Multisite Cross-Cultural Replication of Upper's (1974) Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of Writer's Block.” Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis vol. 40,4 (2007): 773. doi:10.1901/jaba.2007.773
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And FWIW, I picked up both of them in thrift stores, at least one in the women's section: I seem to vaguely recall that there was a period in the 80s when fancy vests were In for some segment of the female population.
PS: Yay, pants! Yay, Hittite memes!
(I don't think there is a magnet for either of these in Porter Square Books, sadly)
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Well, both those things are your jam...
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Also, now I kinda wanna go play Civ3.
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I regret, though, I could only give you that vest in fiction. (So I did.)
I braved the passport office today. With the child. Clearly it is A Week for Hell.
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Thank you! It did feel like an existential victory.
If you're ever looking for more non-stretch jeans, I've had good luck with the "Uniqlo U" line, which tends to be 100% cotton.
I will keep them in mind and I appreciate knowing! The quest for non-stretchy jeans has just been nuts.
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Well, that's brilliant.
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Thank you! I am dead tired but looking forward.
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I appreciate the thought very much.
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Thank you! That will be very useful to me, if not for this convention, then in future.
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I may well take you up on this offer after this weekend. Thank you.
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You're welcome! I am especially fond of the one about the storm gods.
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It is very satisfying!
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Thank you! Given what I have to get done before tomorrow, I suspect I will try borrowing a fancy vest from you at a future date, but I really appreciate the offer! That is also useful to know about thrift stores. Late in the mall experience I was wondering if I should just have spent the day in Goodwill.
(I was at the mall because I had been told something specific about one of the stores which turned out to be kind of not true, but then I was there so I might as well look through all the relevant departments; it wasn't like I thought it would be a pleasant afternoon.)
(I don't think there is a magnet for either of these in Porter Square Books, sadly)
They make me happy all the same!
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"The sea people wish to know your location."
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I really like these pants.
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*accepts it, from the household that all week has been shouting about ham*
I regret, though, I could only give you that vest in fiction. (So I did.)
I regret nothing about that.
I braved the passport office today. With the child. Clearly it is A Week for Hell.
That is serious katabasis. Did you return with passports and/or Eurydike?
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:-D
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I can really relate to Dwight Frye's Renfield.
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Yay!
(I do not have that bilingual book of her poetry, but I want it.)
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We are now watching the Golden Age episode of The Movies, which you should see if you can get a CNN login or are house-sitting for someone with on demand. Child promises they have no questions about racism in the movies. Child is also not yet interested in viewing Casablanca and was extremely ruffled by both the Hays Code and McCarthy.
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*hugs*
I gather they no longer just bang out a bunch of stamps and hand your papers back across the table, so I hope your expedited passports arrive stat and in the meantime you are one of the people I trust to carry all the documentation. ($60 is what nobody has to spare anymore! Jeez.)
Child is also not yet interested in viewing Casablanca and was extremely ruffled by both the Hays Code and McCarthy.
I mean, I'm only going to encourage them re the latter. I expect to die ruffled.
Captain Renault was almost certainly my formative bisexual disaster.
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The only art which can be described as "apolitical" is art which completely supports the entrenched power structure. Which is to say, useless.
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I certainly won't attempt to convince you otherwise. It seems to have worked for you.
The only art which can be described as "apolitical" is art which completely supports the entrenched power structure. Which is to say, useless.
Yes. It is never the case that there are no politics in the art, merely that they so closely match the prevailing background that they blend.
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Completely unrelatedly, but you did link it - is it me or does that piano Lehrer is playing look tilted to you? I can't figure out a consistent camera angle that shows him in that particular profile and yet shows the piano body so completely, unless you imagine the piano is tilted so that its right side (as Lehrer sits) is somehow lower than its upstage left side.
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It is extremely difficult and tends to require amounts of money I don't have to spend on clothing. Stretchy jeans are now the default for women; even companies that used to sell 100% cotton denim have now converted to polyester and elastelane. I could not replace any of my three previous pairs of jeans because they were no longer manufactured. I hate it.
They are de-facto for men.
So far! On this last trip I saw some men's stretchy jeans, which were new to me.
Completely unrelatedly, but you did link it - is it me or does that piano Lehrer is playing look tilted to you?
I think it's a raked stage.
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Also, we encountered this shop in Salem this past weekend and her vests are not Victorian-fancy, but have some really *nice* fabrics (I'm gonna get the Galaxy Vest, which contains sparkles).
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That is mind-boggling to me because of the opposite problem! I'm glad you finally found some. I am concluding that American fashion is just wrong about what people with bodies want.
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https://www.vestsbycharlotte.com/womens-vests/womens-silk-vests
and also... what size are you? just for reasons :)
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I can see why!
and also... what size are you? just for reasons
Off the top of my head, I don't know! My one current vest was a gift from
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Aaaah! Thank you!