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Aw, Emma left a valentine outside my door. A superhero one, with the note yes. They’re all shagging! :) Love her.

Finished and posted my btvs_cupid fic. Now i get to post some of the stuff i was working on during the week when i should have been doing stuff i was actually obligated to do and maybe even catch up on the f'list before today's movie marathon.

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I read this, and my biggest thought was “Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin! I know them from the film i saw at the film fest last fall.” It’s not like i’ve ever actually met them, but i know a lot about them from the film, and i think it’s so wonderful and appropriate that they were the first same-sex couple to be officially married in the United States (though California law states that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California," something some people argue is unconstitutional).

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I’ve never really been bitter about Valentine’s Day. Mostly it just bothers me in the way Christmas does: It’s the one day out of the year in which you proclaim your love. Lots of people expand Valentine’s Day from being just about couples and give cards, candy, whatever, to friends. Maybe it’s just ‘cause i’ve never been one of the popular kids (or just because mastering the whole social thing has never been one of my strengths), but that whole process makes me uncomfortable. You should express your love to your people throughout the year. Holidays are convenient, but for those of us who are paranoid, they can feel like obligations (on both ends). Then there’s also my cheap factor, wherein the obligation to spend lots of money on the one you love (or even just a lot of time doing something homemade, because it is this certain day) rubs me the wrong way. You wanna celebrate your anniversary? Go for it. But why should you have the pressure to do lots of stuff for your partner on a day that only means anything because the world says it does, has no actual relation to you and your relationship.

Recently i’ve felt like i just want to be dating someone ‘cause i like physical affection and i don’t get near enough of that, and it would be nice to have someone to kiss. (Plus the ego stroke of there mere fact that someone wants to date me. What? Have i ever said i’m not shallow?)

Then i remember what i really think of dating: that it’s about finding the person you want to commit the rest of your life to, that it’s about a primary partner, the person who comes first in all the world, “your home, your bottom line,” as Amy Hunt said.

I was talking to a friend recently and joked about dating her. She said:

that is a really really scary thought, sweetie. I don't think it would get that far . .. I think we'd kill each other.
traits that one can tolerate in a friend often become intolerable in a lover, let me tell you.
we have irreconcilable differences
which we get around by respecting each others' opinions
it's impossible to be as respectful of another's opinions when you're dating them. a very sad thing.

I sometimes wonder what my parents see/saw in each other since they are so very different, but the fact that they are still so deeply in love and committed to each other after more than 20 years (and 2 children) makes me instinctively question the idea that friends who are different can’t be partners, by virtue of those differences. Though there are plenty of friends i couldn’t date because we have such different ways of being in the world, so i definitely understand where the argument comes from. But partnership is about being with the person who matters most to you in the world, not about how similar your politics are. I mean, i like talking to people with whom i disagree. Talking to yourself gets boring (though that implies i don’t argue with myself, something we all know is untrue). But i sometimes get so sick of disagreeing with people, and certainly there are points at which having such differences just isn’t feasible. So yeah, i totally understand the argument, i just sort of instinctively react against it.

Thoughts? (On the evils of Valentine’s Day, the purpose of dating, irreconcilable differences, or anything else.)

"I know I can't be the only whatever I am in the room" (ani, "face up and sing")

Um, can i marry Angela Carter. (Okay, she’s dead, but does that really matter?)

I like her short stories a lot and would like to read her other stuff. But in class on Thursday, Betsey said that someone said of talking with Carter, that she would automatically take the opposite position and point out all the flaws with your argument. Clearly i am in love.

My father e-mailed me with the subject line: Who did I think of?

I think i should perhaps be barred from speaking about Left vs. Right because my experience of the divide is so skewed. I read thoughtful reasoned webloggers who lean conservative, and i read the personal online journals of people who lean liberal. Because my LJ people are thoughtful intelligent people, it feels appropriate to generalize from them, but the fact remains that they are not trying to write analytic pieces. If i read more informal stuff from conservatives perhaps i would feel the underlying current of bile which i feel in so much of the left and which turns me off so much. Anyone have intelligent thoughtful leftist pundits/webloggers to recommend? (The increasingly meaninglessness of the Left/Right divide given the overlap and even reversal of positions will be another post, as my father has written more articulately than i the same things i keep thinking/saying.)

I had never heard of Tammy Bruce before Jessica Chesnutt, but she’s gonna be speaking at Smith Thursday, February 19, 7:30pm, Seelye 106. I bold this because, according to her website, "Tammy Bruce is an openly gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Reagan progressive feminist." Clearly i am stoked. Especially because i am going to grow up and be her (well, almost).

( the Sophian features article )

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LJ is such a weird forum. It’s so easy to “make friends” with people, but it’s also often so difficult to know where you stand with someone. I mean, i can be really good friends with someone and read all their entries, but if i never comment (and don’t often see them in person) it can look the same as if “friended” them and then filtered them out of my f’list view.

The insanity that is all of our lives does not aid in alleviating this angst. There are so many people i actually could make hang-out dates with if we had any free time, for example. And i don’t filter out any of the people i have on my f’list (though i often filter communities) but i’ve been bad about commenting.

It is tempting to do a poll to see how many of you actually read this, because clearly i have complexes.

I myself subscribe mostly to the carrier bag theory of blogging, which is that a blog is a shapeless baggy container that will hold just about anything you care to put in it. I've used this blog to discuss books, TV shows, writing, fandom, fanfiction, dental appointments, financial worries, and current affairs, not to mention my various neuroses. At this point, I figure that no one reads all the entries, and that anyone reading it regularly has gotten used to skimming the gold from the dross, for their personal values of "gold" and "dross." A lot of blogs are navel-gazing, or are devoted to what I consider the tedious details of strangers' or semistrangers' lives; I don't read them. But I assume that they serve some purpose for the blogger, or the blogger's friends.

We all use the telephone. We don't all make the same kind of calls.

...

I think of my blog as being sort of like my backpack. (Today it's even black, like every single backpack I've ever owned.) It gets beat up, I put anything in it that it can hold, the zipper usually gets broken, and it's useful for pretty much whatever I want to do. Or I'll try to make it useful by sheer force of will, which, come to think of it, is usually how the zipper gets broken.

-melymbrosia

Oh, and that interview meme seems to have come back. I suck at coming up with questions to ask people, but ask me anything and i’ll answer.

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Breakfast at Tiffany's is a weird movie. I am opting out of Radical Harmonies to actually get some homework done. Go me.