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Open Thread with Meerkats

Meerkats feature for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

Suricata suricatta -Auckland Zoo -group-8a
By Ashleigh Thompson (originally posted to Flickr as Meerkats) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

So, what have you been up to? What would you rather be up to? What’s been awesome/awful?
Reading? Watching? Making? Meeting?
What has [insert awesome inspiration/fave fansquee/guilty pleasure/dastardly ne’er-do-well/threat to all civilised life on the planet du jour] been up to?


* Netiquette footnotes:
* There is no off-topic on the Weekly Open Thread, but consider whether your comment would be on-topic on any recent thread and thus better belongs there.
* If your comment touches on topics known to generally result in thread-jacking, you will be expected to take the discussion to #spillover instead of overshadowing the social/circuit-breaking aspects of this thread.


10 thoughts on Open Thread with Meerkats

  1. My transition has been going really well. I have my hair touching my shoulders now and I have never been this appreciative of my face and hair. Even my hair has changed – it went from a dark, dull brown to brown with a reddish glow.

    I’m feeling more and more comfortable with being a butch lesbian, the kind of identity that I have always felt was mine but used to deny or ignore. My ideal style includes tank tops, leather/denim jackets, and all-black-and-dark-grey clothing. I’m also thinking about starting to wear more makeup – I don’t know how wearing bright lipstick would fit with all-black clothing, but it sounds interesting.

    Basically I’m sick of doing nothing to really change my appearance due to fear of being judged by family. They no longer have any control over my personal expression and personality, so I need to ignore what they think. Sure, they’ll think my butchness is the reason I’m not “transsexual enough”, but they’re always going to think I’m a man, even if I wear something as femme as a Pakistani wedding dress. I’m not going to tailor myself to their expectations.

    1. Oh, and I desperately want to pull off a Joan Jett look. It’s probably not possible, and I might end up looking really silly, but I really want to emulate her style.

      1. Or I could go for something dark. In fact, I’ve been thinking about trying on very dark lipstick for this Halloween…but for some reason I feel too nervous about others possibly finding out about it. :{

  2. I’ve always liked that “soft butch” look. And one of the highlights of my recent life was seeing Joan Jett perform at a space in Brooklyn a few years ago. If you can pull it off, more power to you!

    And you are right: at this point, you need to ignore your family’s negativity.

  3. I’m back home after my gallbladder removal surgery. What a relief! Disharged yesterday and spent most of the day simply luxuriating in my own bed.

    Looking forward to the bruised feeling resolving over the next few days.

  4. I went to see Book of Life last week.

    1. It’s a kid’s movie, and it feels like a kid’s movie. It’s wholly plot-driven, powered by deus ex machina (very literally, with two gods no less), and the plot is framed as somebody telling stories so it goes forward. The plot is also obviously tweaked so that some potentially very scary things are watered down enough to not terrify six-year-olds.

    2. The artwork is breathtaking. The character Santa Muerte is designed as a life-sized sugar version of La Calavera Catrina and when she turns her face, she glitters, just like sugar.

    3. Standard 2 boys arguing over a girl, none of them are given much in the way of personality, and the way it plays out, you get a strange combination of a nuanced, quite delicate way of it playing out with annoying stock tropes powered by the aforementioned deus ex machina. Unfortunately the annoying stock tropes won over the nuance in the end.

    4. There are parts of this movie that feel HORRIBLY racist….like, oh my god, did I really see that….until you get a good bit of the way into it, and then you realise that it’s a Galaxy Quest: RUTHLESS parody of several elements of Mexican culture…that is a love letter sealed with a kiss. But in order to recognise that it’s a love letter, you have to know enough about what they’re parodying and for some folks they’re just not going to get it.

    5. That said: if you have studied any Mexican history or culture, you can see that they did their homework and they did a lot of it.

    6. The Placido Domingo cameo is worth it.

    7. So is watching the main character’s mother slap a god across the face.

    8. Santa Muerte and Xibalba have a gambling problem.

    9. Passes the Bechdel test.

    10. Would I go see it again? Yes. Despite its obvious and rather significant flaws, the artwork alone is worth it, and the fact that the main character arc is a love story between two equally powerful gods (how often does that happen).

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