Zoom

[radegund]

Off at the crack of dawn to Geneva with niallm to visit my sister. Back on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, if you're bored, the Other Place has been getting more attention than usual this week, in the shape of (a) a whirly babble about how busy I am, (b) a ranty and no doubt ill-informed reflection on the sciences/humanities divide, and (c) Radzer's essential guide to the great question of our age: Are you a Man or a Blouse?

Finally, I missed this when it came out, but it's good: Guardian article about irony (28 June 2003).

Comments

[ailbhe]

(e) I seem to do both science and humanities; what gives?

(f) In my idiolect, "A Real Man" is a thing to fear and shy away from - they belch tunes, swill beer, and teach their sons that only sissies cry, for example. This is, I will admit, drawn largely from observations on the kind of men who use the phrase "a real man".

(g) I have apparently discovered housework; the house has been tidy consistently for nearly two weeks now, and it hasn't taken a vast amount of effort. I have always known about the secret and dirty pleasures of DIY - the glee at discovering the perfect screwdriver, the rapture over a really well-developed range of rust-proof paints that doesn't drip or form great glutinous lumps, the sniggering short-cut of repainting the bathroom tiles all in white so that the grouting looks fresh. I cook, code, and occasionally perpetrate poetry. The most interesting thing about my pregnancy, so far (most interesting, not most absorbing - I haven't worked out what that is yet) is the change it brings to my anatomy; I keep prodding bits of me and wishing I'd made copious notes before getting pregnant, so that I could be sure that it used to be different.

So is the Real Man / Blouse divide really a science / humanities divide, and that's why I straddle it?

(g)(i)And where do Proper Girls fit in - the ones who can't walk anywhere or have an intelligent conversation unless the topic is accessories? The ones who think that it actually is more important to wear the right shade of nailvarnish than to exercise your right to vote, or to learn to cook? The ones who think that wearing fashionable clothes is more important than wearing clothes that suit you, or even fit? The ones who scare me rigid and make me feel vastly inferior, even though I think I despise them?

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Hee. Remember me reading you out bits from Now!'s gossip column last night, and going, "You know, given that this magazine is downmarket trash, she's making some genuinely well-thought-out points here about soap operas?" The columnist was Zoe Williams. That's a truly classy irony: be smart enough to write papers about Schlegel for the country's most intelligent daily, and at the same time enjoy writing snarky columns about Madonna for the tabloid magazines. Respect!

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

(erm, I mean her country's most intelligent daily, of course. Hell of me.)