gaylefrancis’s blog

I keep nearly forgetting that I have this lovely little piece of the internets.  Last I posted, I was still helping plan Take Back the Night.  It went exceptionally well, with the exception of some guy during a fundraising request saying he didn't think the Residence Hall Association should support it because rape and domestic violence are women's issues.

This jackass is now the President of the campus chapter of Amnesty International and wants to put their efforts into the Darfur crisis.  You know, the one where all those women are getting raped and killed?

I'll leave you to WTF this particular piece of trendivism.

In a brief update, it is officially cold as balls in my part of Missouri.  We got three inches of ice and five inches of snow last weekend.  And I saw a Chilly Willie icee truck parked outside of my office yesterday.  The idea that the icee machine in the union had to be refilled when it was 30 damned degrees outside really amazes me.

I turn 24 on Saturday.  The boy and I are headed down to my family house to spend the weekend with my folks, do some laundry for free, and get the kind of meals you only get when you are the favored daughter and it is your birthday. 

I've been crocheting Bastardly Annoying Holiday [furthermore known as BAH] for about the past three weeks.  The gifts for the boy's mom have been done for a couple of weeks, thankfully, and I'm now whipping up gifts for both my bosses and another woman in the department who treats me like her favorite niece.  She is the only person on the entire campus who does not chance getting her arms ripped off for calling me, "Kid" or "Kiddo". 

And how are you lot?

This week and next week are insane for me.  We're working publicity for Take Back the Night on Monday night, and it's all planning and publicity until then.  Saturday afternoon I have a meeting for National Novel Writer's Month [I run the crew in my area], and then the next week looks like this:

Monday-Take Back the Night 5:30 PM-10:00 PM
Tuesday-NaNo kick-off party from 11:00 PM-2:00 AM
Wednesday-NaNo Write-In, 6:00-9:00 PM
Thursday-College Bowl [with a NaNoer, interestingly]
Friday-Nothing [so far]
Saturday-NaNo Write-In, 10:00 AM-6:00 PM

I'm catching up on sleep this week.

Be so kind as to have hot, witty, incredibly intelligent and suave sex with me.  RIGHT NOW.

You're self-deprecating, hilariously funny, and not afraid to make the occasional sly joke about having a Man Crush on Bono.  And you never take a side.  That is incredibly hot.  Please do me.

-Me

P.S.  If you can't get a note from your wife, let me know.  Keith Olbermann's still single, and I find it incredibly hot when he DOES pick a side.  Go figure.

Seems like any time I get bored and foolish and click on a link at msn.com that has to do with relationships, it's always about how the woman needs to keep her shit together for the man.

Fuck no.

Relationships, last I checked, go both ways.  If I have to keep my shit together for my boy, then he'd best be keeping his shit together for me.  One-sided relationship advice does nothing but guarentee that one side of the relationship is setting itself up for doormat status.  And that side of the relationship getting shitty advice tends to be female.  I've been into the self-help section of the bookstore, and once my hives cleared, it was nothing but overly cartoonish covers telling women how to shape up, stick out their bust, accept no dates after Wednesday, and discover how "He's Just Not that Into You" [On a sidenote:  Greg Berhandt?  Used to be a funny guy.  Now he's just a dickweed.].

You know how I know a guy isn't into me?  I fucking ask him.  Beats all the bulshit passive-aggressive games I see women play because they think that's how they're supposed to be.  I played the passive-aggressive games for awhile, batted my eyelashes, tried to be coy, but then my pride kicked me in the box and I got the hell over it. 

I've been in a very happy relationship for just over two years, and you know what makes it work?  Direct communication.  None of that sitcom bullshit where "Fine" means "I want to kill you with my brain".  When I'm pissed, I announce it, and when I'm pissed at the boy, I announce it straight to him.  And you know how many knock down drag out fights we've had in the past two years?  Not a goddamned one. 

Drop the self-help bullshit.  It's not self-help.  It's trusting someone who doesn't know you, hasn't met you, and knows nothing of your personal history, to tell you how to handle your life.  Which they don't live.  And if you think you do need help, see a therapist.  Someone who will listen.  Someone who will give advice tailored to you, not generic bullshit that doesn't matter.

Being blunt has gotten me into some hot water, for certain, but I'd much rather be in hot water for what I've said as opposed to what people think I said.

Deity, how I hate "self-help".

Just for the record.  I wanted to make sure I mentioned I finished it before I forgot that I'd finished it. 

The last 100 pages are just astounding.  I'm just nearly ready to call myself Neil Gaiman's lap dog, even if he's not in need of one.

I was on Amazon the other day, looking up The Ninth Doctor's run on "Doctor Who", and I browsed a few of the reviews.  Now, I love the Who I've seen [Docs Nine and Ten], and I especially loved Billie Piper as Rose, the companion, because Rose was strong and smart and funny and independant, and she loved The Doctor.  Billie Piper's chemistry with Christopher Eccelston [Nine] was astounding from the first moment.  Her chemistry with David Tennant [Ten] was also amazing, but in a different way, because Ten was supposed to be different from Nine, and I think Billie Piper, and her chracter, adjusted perfectly.

Smart man+Smart woman=kickass television, yeah?

Apparently not according to one asshole.  Some guy at Amazon [and a cronie that agreed in a reply], gave the new Who 1-star because he said that CE in an interview, made some comment about the new Who being especially important to young women because of the character of Rose.  The reviewer of the new Who referred to it as "feminist propaganda".

A smart, capable, witty, independant, but still ocassionally in the need of saving female is feminist propaganda?  I don't fucking think so.

"Feminist propaganda" is not strong, capable women being brave and intelligent and oh so fun.  "Feminist propaganda" is women, not speaking for the majority, saying that women should get more and deserve better than men.  It's women who get reactionary and say that no matter the intent or the comment of the joke, it's the reaction to the joke or comment that lets it be decided what is and isn't sexual harassment.  Propaganda is women telling me that because I wasn't in the mood to have sex at 6:00, but had sex at 6:30, my boyfriend raped me, rather than he knew where to kiss and how and got me in the mood.

A smart, strong, capable woman who occasionally saves the man who occasionally saves her?  Not propaganda.  It's how women should be, and how they should strive to be, and there' s no propaganda behind that. 

I've only recently come into Doctor Who, as I grew up in a small town in Arkansas where our local PBS carried plenty of British stuff but never any Who.  I heard about the series being relaunched, but until a couple of months ago, I hadn't caught an episode.  I'm a bit of a sci-fi geek, so I was all excited when I finally got ahold of some almost completley legal downloads episodes, and I promptly fell in love.

And then, of course, Chris Eccelston had to leave, and I cried my eyes out at the end of the first series.
And then, of course, Billie Piper had to leave, and I just finished crying my eyes out about five minutes ago.

Other occasions when Dr. Who has made me cry:

Rose going back in time to see her father, who died when she was a baby.
Rose's speech when she gets trapped with a Dalek.
The Doctor's happiness at the end of "The Doctor Dances".
Rose when The Doctor [The Ninth] sends her back to Earth to save her from the Daleks.
Rose fighting to figure out how to come back.

And that's just series one.

A show hasn't made me cry this often since...ever.

It's not fair, I say.

What's the last thing you usually do or think about before you fall asleep?

What I think about really depends on how much crap I'm thinking about when I'm attempting to sleep.  Sometimes I drop off right away because I'm exhausted and so I think about nothing.  Sometimes I keep myself up for a good long while running through various ideas for Jane D.O.E. or coming up with crochet patterns or thinking about everything I need to do the next day.  It all really depends on how tired or wired I am.

I'm intrigued.  No idea yet what I'll do with this brand new space, but I'm always willing to give it a try.  I'm reading American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, and I think it's freakin' amazing.  I'll try to be more coherent when I'm done reading it, but I'm coming up to what looks to be the best part, and I don't want to say more than that.  And that, as they say, is that.

American Gods: A Novel

Neil Gaiman