I Post Links

• Shakesville took on Miley Cyrus and feminism.

I have actively avoided discussing Miley Cyrus on any of my social media outlets, including my blog and Twitter account, because most of the crap I've seen is exploitative clickbait, and I care a lot more about integrity than I care about pageviews. Obviously, the racist aspects of her recent antics are something of concern, and y'know what, her feminism is so very far from perfect. But y'know what else? So was mine when I first started claiming the term ten years ago. My understanding is still so far from perfect. So yeah. I totally second Melissa:

Not everyone agrees with me that it is not feminists' job to publicly audit declarations of feminism. In which case, I hope the auditors will not admonish Miley Cyrus and Courtney Stodden to stop calling themselves feminists, but instead to urge them to robustly embrace more and ever more feminism.

• Yesterday was Transgender Day of Remembrance. I observed on my Twitter, but failed to say anything here. As a rather girly, cis female, I know I'm never going to really be able to completely identify with and understand the horrific crap that's commonplace in the lives of my trans friends. But I can do my best to support them, and to learn how to be a better supporter every day. This includes taking down falsehoods such as binary gender. 

• The Everyday Goth has shared a good reminder that one of our favorite critters within the goth community, the humble, adorable bat, needs our help: 

So, why do bats need help? Bat populations, particularly in the United States, have been in trouble for a while. White Nose syndrome, a fungal infection you can read more about here, and loss of habitat have driven bat population to dire levels (also, surprisingly, wind turbines that generate wind power have been damaging to bats). Bats, which contribute to flower pollination and insect population control, are a big player in our ecosystems, and without them, we'll definitely notice. So, they're not just cute faces! Bat conservation is extremely important.

You also really wanna check the comments. Some very cute bat stories ensued in the commentary. Also, commenter Bane shared a fantastic site, Batgoods, at which you can buy all things bat-motif, and proceeds from every sale go to Bat Conservation International. This is the most amazing thing I've seen since The Purple Store!

Blog Note:

The wacky pink "canned" template is temporary. The old layout had some issues, and while I work on a new design that isn't going to do annoying things, this is going to be here for probably a few days. I know it's not the greatest thing ever, but it's temporary. Thanks for your patience, loves.

Happy Wednesday!

I've got some work done on some drafts, but I didn't finish any writing today. But hey, there's always the evening. I plan to have a few drinks and write. Wouldn't Hemingway be proud.

Fortunately, it's Wednesday, so I can have some context in which to show you Adult Wednesday Addams. If you haven't seen her yet, I feel bad for ya:






There are more over here. The season finale (episode 6) is my favorite. Enjoy!

The stuff people throw away.

There is a fridge on the curb next to one of the dumpsters in my apartment complex, y'all. A friggin' fridge.

Folks since I moved in six months ago have thrown away things not limited to: at least a dozen mattresses, a full dresser/armoire/nightstand set, more TV's than I can count, couches, tables, bathroom cabinetry (?) and last night, someone tossed a bicycle frame with the wheels missing. (That was missing this morning when I left for work. Waste not, want not I s'pose.) It's just mind blowing, especially considering what a poor neighborhood I live in, that huge items such as these are carted off to waste each week. I also look with shame at the grocery items that don't make their way into my tummy before they grow fuzz and have to be thrown out. It makes you wonder, why?

I went through a freegan phase the last time I lived in Indianapolis. Honestly, maybe I should go back to that. I ate better quality foods, I furnished half my apartment for free, and I often found beautiful flowers that I decorated my apartment with or gave away.

We are such unbelievably wasteful creatures. We hoard and waste more than that Hell layer in Dante's book would have even known how to deal with. Thanks to Pinterest, I at least keep most of my hoarding in the digital domain.

I'm not huge on the American holiday of Thanksgiving, because it's a celebration of three things I really don't cotton to: excess, imperialism, and commercialism. But in the spirit of appealing to a season in which people also value thankfulness (Which I pray will evolve to a point where we're thankful daily as a culture), one Thanksgiving blessing I wish to see on all people is an abundant thankfulness for "enough."

Imagine if we realized we have enough.

Forget the frustration, let's just write already.

I was pacing around my apartment feeling frustrated as a blogger, because I’ve been doing this in fits and starts, never quite managing to be consistent. Not being sure if I’ve “found my voice” or if I even know what that means. I signed up for NaNoWriMo on a whim, but the month is half over, and I’ve got nary a word to show for it.

This started as a fashion blog, and my personal style has been off the wall lately, but I haven’t been getting photos because my crappy camera broke, as crappy cameras are wont to do. And I had internet because I was going in halvsies with my neighbors, but then they abruptly decided to stop that. So I’m internetless again. Note to self: Put a camera on my wish list and move to a town where monopolies don’t drive even the cheap internet up to $40/month. If such a place even exists anymore.

And, even though my boyfriend is a photographer, he lives 30 miles away, still in his mom’s house, because that's where he landed when his wife died and he moved back up here to be closer to his family. The deal on the house he was going to purchase fell through, and housing prices in Plainfield are horrendous anyway. I see him on weekends if I’m lucky. So we’ve basically both been feeling like thwarted people in both romantic and creative senses.

But yeah. I remembered just now that nobody wrote a rule that you have to write only when everything is perfect. Which I frequently remember, but then I forget again, and then we go a month or three without me saying anything at all. Well, Allie Brosh didn’t write for nearly a year and a half, and nobody’s calling her a big fake.

So this isn’t the year that I’m going to write the Great American Novel. But I can still write every day. I can flip my middle finger right in the face of the Impostor Syndrome that keeps telling me I’ll never go anywhere as a writer, and finish those drafts that have been chilling unfinished for more time than I care to think about.

Things are actually pretty stupendous right now. Maybe I got more out of the recent social media hiatus than I thought. In any case, it’s Monday evening right now, and I’m thinking this is a good time to commit to writing every day this week. Just to see what happens if I do. Maybe I’m too old to be that capricious kid who updated her LiveJournal 4 times a day, but I’m too young to be out of thoughts.

So that’s what we’re doing this week. I’m going to vomit words onto a screen for five days, because I hung out with a two year old all this past weekend, and so right now I feel like structure is boring. Maybe I do better when I quit overthinking anyway. I haven’t really stuck with it long enough in the past ten years to find out.

She's In Parties

So, Halloween parties and such happened this weekend. I was going to dress as Unnecessarily Sexy Zoidberg in a sort of statement on the ubiquity of sexified women's costumes.  Not necessarily a protest, because women dang well ought to be able to choose what they wear on this or any other day. But just a statement that, eventually, when the sexified option is frequently the only option in stores, it gets just plain absurd and not even sexy anymore. Hence, Zoidberg in lingerie.

I still need to do some modifications on the costume, though. I don't like the face makeup, the tentacles on my face don't come out right and the reds don't match up, and the pincers aren't right yet. So I'll be debuting Zoidberg at a convention at some future date.

Instead, I gothed out this weekend. I gothed harder than I've gothed in years. I went to an 80s prom dressed as Siouxsie Sioux. Although I may have looked more like a cross between Robert Smith and Evil Sheila from Army of Darkness. Your mileage may vary:

After I took this, I decided the eyeliner was still too subtle and put it on twice as thick.

I will sing sweetly to you while I eat your soul.

Ha, the normal people thought this was just a costume...

Since my hair was still enormous the next day from all the teasing, and I was tired from dancing, and I knew it was going to take forever to detangle, I just put my hair up in a messy, big pouf bun, because I had to go in to work for a few hours. I was still feeling the mood, but I just bought a new skirt that I wanted to try out, which is pink and navy. I decided to wear it as a strapless tunic over black fleece-lined leggings, with a purple cashmere cardigan that was a Christmas gift from a couple of years ago. I accessorized with spike bracelets, my new green skeleton-hands necklace, my Plan 9 poster necklace, and plenty of under-eye concealer for a deceptively wakeful-looking, colorful, and still corporategoth friendly getup:

And then there was the Halloween party at the Catacombs underneath City Market. Oh, man. Best party ever. It was creepy, it was dark, the industrial music was thumping, the 200-year-old brick walls were dripping, and we danced on dirt floors. I just basically wore an elevated version of how I often dress when I'm not at work, with shorter, tighter shorts and hair that reminds me of Marie Antionette, if Marie Antoinette was a vampire. I kept getting compliments on my "costume." I mean, granted, I don't wear the corset every day, but I wear it whenever an occasion presents itself.

Princess Valhalla Hawkwind!!

My lipstick is smeared all over my chin. Kind of destroys the effect.

The reason my makeup got smeared all over the place!

I hope your Halloween weekend was as super magical as mine was! Did you hit any sweet parties?



And, because I DEFINITELY felt visible on Saturday at work and Saturday evening in the Catacombs, I'm participating in Not Dead Yet's Visible Mondays for this week.