Entry tags:
Y2/D309
Well, I got laundry done today, after being thwarted on Monday. Feel rather accomplished actually. I managed to do the equivalent of seven loads between 6am - 8:30 am. I clocked into work at 7:55 am. (Working remotely today). I was able to finally wash my duvet, duvet cover, throw blanket, pillows, sheets, towels, and assorted clothing. It was actually kind of peaceful and easy doing it at 6 am on a Wednesday morning, no one was done there. This most likely would not have been the case on a Saturday or Sunday. Evenings are often good as well. The trick to doing laundry in an apartment complex is to pick a time no one else wants to do it.
Also went grocery shopping at the health food store after work, and scored gluten free ravoli via Cappelli's made with almond flour. I wanted the Beecher's World's Best gluten-free mac and cheese - but this was by far the healthier option. Apparently they can't have both in at the same time.
My entire immediate family, that isn't in Britain, ordered free At Home COVID Tests from the Federal Government. The one in Britain doesn't need them - the British are ahead of us on this one, and she's well stocked.
She apparently had her first in-person class last week. I wish I was studying Critical Race Theory and Global Economics in London. Well, okay, maybe not - I hated school. But I loved London. Theater in London is far better than theater in NY, granted they are different, but London theater is more affordable and accessible, also there's a greater emphasis on the classics. Helped by the fact that Britain has various State sponsored theaters - such as the National Theater, and the Royal Shakespeare Theater. And a greater wealth of talent. The best theater actors often pop up from Britain. I miss London Theater. Not that I'd be partaking, I'm not exactly partaking in NY. But I've gone a very long time without seeing live theater - the longest I've ever gone. Up until 2020, I was seeing at least one to two shows a year. I was even scheduled to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with a friend when Broadway shut down.
I miss live theater. I truly love it more than any other brand of cultural entertainment.
COVID took my theater away from me. Let's hope it's temporary.
**
Anyhow, worked from home today and will work from home tomorrow, then back in the office. Work was somewhat productive. We'll see if it becomes more so tomorrow. I sometimes feel as if I'm pushing a piece of paper up a cliff at work. They keep adding layers of bureaucracy. It's ironic, but the bureaucracy was added by the private company consultants, not the folks in government.
Out of boredom more than anything else, okay, curiosity, I checked to see the responses to the Whedon article on Twitter - which was vocal but not quite as expected. Also FB on it - far more active, since they made it into the article.
Re-sharing this insightful interview with Claudia Black:
Claudia Black on the Nevers and Breaking Cycles of Trauma
There's also an interesting thread on Twitter...that pointed out things that had never occurred to me or not in that way, before...regarding Buffy:
It's by a young woman who imprinted on Buffy as a teen and is dissecting how she related to the series.
Constance Grady
![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
constancegrady
·
Jan 17
I often think of Buffy in relation to the Atwood quote, "You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” Part of the reason it worked extraordinarily well for me as a kid was that it seemed as though the show understood that … and that, for instance, Angel's morning-after speech to Buffy was so painful because it was exactly what the enemy in her mind was going to say.
Anyway. It's interesting to see these blindspots play out in real life.
This never really occurred to me, but it makes sense. The ingrained misogyny in women is that male voice inside our heads. Whedon doesn't appear to realize the guy inside his head is inside the women's heads too, the poster notes. I find that fascinating.
She adds..
Also just worth noting that it's on the record that it's a favorite joke of Whedon's to tell pregnant women that they're fat — he does it for instance in Nell Scovell's memoir. She writes there that she thought it was funny at the time.
It's in Buffy, and various sitcoms, and was prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s. I saw it a lot in the workplace, even as late as 2010.
This is an idea Whedon plays with a lot in his writing, most explicitly in the Buffy episode Conversations with Dead People. There, Buffy says that she feels like she's better than all of her friends, and also like she's a terrible person for thinking that.
From the article:
"A vampire," Whedon said, "is an exalted outsider, a creature that feels like less than everybody else and also kind of more than everybody else. There's this insecurity and arrogance. They do a little dance."
Interesting - that's actually the definition of narcissism. Someone who feels superior but has no real sense of self. They are all ego. And the ego constantly needs to be feed. Narcissist is someone with no soul or sense of self. They are unself-aware.
That episode is a good example of how to make such an admission in a way that seems admirable, even perhaps overly self-flagellating. Buffy's a superhero! Her sins are pretty minimal. She is not, for instance, dating her much-younger employees.
And..
And this is another instance of Whedon seeming to instinctively understand that women do have that enemy in their heads, too. This is absolutely something that would happen on one of his shows, and I don't mean that as a compliment. You can see the storytelling instinct at work.
What she's referencing is an instance related in the interview, where Whedon started dating a Female Pickup Artist who'd written a memoir. When he found out she was into BDSM, he sent her all of his Dollhouse DVDs, and asked to set up a Master/Doll scenario. Which they did for several years. She related in the epilogue of her memoir that the worst thing that had happened to her was her boyfriend breaking up with her on her birthday. Whedon read the book and the epilogue, and they discussed it. Then Whedon went out of his way to show up on her birthday, and break up with her.
And she's absolutely right, it would happen on those shows. Whedon pushed his writers to come up with their most embarrassing, traumatizing moments, and mine the actors for theirs, then write about them. Marsters has indicated this in various Q&A's, as have others, including the writers themselves. Whedon wrote horror, and wrote what he knew and other's knew.
Sorry for all of the Whedon crap. I'm just fascinated by it for some reason or other.
***
It's late, must go to bed. Another early wakeup call tomorrow.
It is supposed to snow tomorrow. It's quiet now, and warmer today. So we shall see.
Random Photo of the Night..
Also went grocery shopping at the health food store after work, and scored gluten free ravoli via Cappelli's made with almond flour. I wanted the Beecher's World's Best gluten-free mac and cheese - but this was by far the healthier option. Apparently they can't have both in at the same time.
My entire immediate family, that isn't in Britain, ordered free At Home COVID Tests from the Federal Government. The one in Britain doesn't need them - the British are ahead of us on this one, and she's well stocked.
She apparently had her first in-person class last week. I wish I was studying Critical Race Theory and Global Economics in London. Well, okay, maybe not - I hated school. But I loved London. Theater in London is far better than theater in NY, granted they are different, but London theater is more affordable and accessible, also there's a greater emphasis on the classics. Helped by the fact that Britain has various State sponsored theaters - such as the National Theater, and the Royal Shakespeare Theater. And a greater wealth of talent. The best theater actors often pop up from Britain. I miss London Theater. Not that I'd be partaking, I'm not exactly partaking in NY. But I've gone a very long time without seeing live theater - the longest I've ever gone. Up until 2020, I was seeing at least one to two shows a year. I was even scheduled to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with a friend when Broadway shut down.
I miss live theater. I truly love it more than any other brand of cultural entertainment.
COVID took my theater away from me. Let's hope it's temporary.
**
Anyhow, worked from home today and will work from home tomorrow, then back in the office. Work was somewhat productive. We'll see if it becomes more so tomorrow. I sometimes feel as if I'm pushing a piece of paper up a cliff at work. They keep adding layers of bureaucracy. It's ironic, but the bureaucracy was added by the private company consultants, not the folks in government.
Out of boredom more than anything else, okay, curiosity, I checked to see the responses to the Whedon article on Twitter - which was vocal but not quite as expected. Also FB on it - far more active, since they made it into the article.
Re-sharing this insightful interview with Claudia Black:
Claudia Black on the Nevers and Breaking Cycles of Trauma
There's also an interesting thread on Twitter...that pointed out things that had never occurred to me or not in that way, before...regarding Buffy:
It's by a young woman who imprinted on Buffy as a teen and is dissecting how she related to the series.
Constance Grady
constancegrady·
Jan 17
I often think of Buffy in relation to the Atwood quote, "You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” Part of the reason it worked extraordinarily well for me as a kid was that it seemed as though the show understood that … and that, for instance, Angel's morning-after speech to Buffy was so painful because it was exactly what the enemy in her mind was going to say.
Anyway. It's interesting to see these blindspots play out in real life.
This never really occurred to me, but it makes sense. The ingrained misogyny in women is that male voice inside our heads. Whedon doesn't appear to realize the guy inside his head is inside the women's heads too, the poster notes. I find that fascinating.
She adds..
Also just worth noting that it's on the record that it's a favorite joke of Whedon's to tell pregnant women that they're fat — he does it for instance in Nell Scovell's memoir. She writes there that she thought it was funny at the time.
It's in Buffy, and various sitcoms, and was prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s. I saw it a lot in the workplace, even as late as 2010.
This is an idea Whedon plays with a lot in his writing, most explicitly in the Buffy episode Conversations with Dead People. There, Buffy says that she feels like she's better than all of her friends, and also like she's a terrible person for thinking that.
From the article:
"A vampire," Whedon said, "is an exalted outsider, a creature that feels like less than everybody else and also kind of more than everybody else. There's this insecurity and arrogance. They do a little dance."
Interesting - that's actually the definition of narcissism. Someone who feels superior but has no real sense of self. They are all ego. And the ego constantly needs to be feed. Narcissist is someone with no soul or sense of self. They are unself-aware.
That episode is a good example of how to make such an admission in a way that seems admirable, even perhaps overly self-flagellating. Buffy's a superhero! Her sins are pretty minimal. She is not, for instance, dating her much-younger employees.
And..
And this is another instance of Whedon seeming to instinctively understand that women do have that enemy in their heads, too. This is absolutely something that would happen on one of his shows, and I don't mean that as a compliment. You can see the storytelling instinct at work.
What she's referencing is an instance related in the interview, where Whedon started dating a Female Pickup Artist who'd written a memoir. When he found out she was into BDSM, he sent her all of his Dollhouse DVDs, and asked to set up a Master/Doll scenario. Which they did for several years. She related in the epilogue of her memoir that the worst thing that had happened to her was her boyfriend breaking up with her on her birthday. Whedon read the book and the epilogue, and they discussed it. Then Whedon went out of his way to show up on her birthday, and break up with her.
And she's absolutely right, it would happen on those shows. Whedon pushed his writers to come up with their most embarrassing, traumatizing moments, and mine the actors for theirs, then write about them. Marsters has indicated this in various Q&A's, as have others, including the writers themselves. Whedon wrote horror, and wrote what he knew and other's knew.
Sorry for all of the Whedon crap. I'm just fascinated by it for some reason or other.
***
It's late, must go to bed. Another early wakeup call tomorrow.
It is supposed to snow tomorrow. It's quiet now, and warmer today. So we shall see.
Random Photo of the Night..