Well, Now I Know Where to Get my MFA

Vermont College of the Fine Arts: Where We Let You Just Sit Alone In a Pool of Light, Being all Emo and Exploring Your Soul

Gothic Novel Update

IT'S FINISHED!

By which I mean, all thirty chapters are written, and the resolution is as resolved as it's going to be.

I may go back and refine things, I may ignore it for another five or six years and then put out the New, New Revised Edition.

Only time will tell.

Sunday Poem

Best Thing Ever?

Just when you think it can't get any more amazing, about three minutes in, it transcends to a level of amazing so amazing there are no words to describe how amazing it is.

Something Worth Reading

I missed this when it first came out, because I was in NYC, but there is a quite thought provoking post on Shakesville: The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck, about the difficulty of dealing with mysogyny from men we otherwise love, like, respect.

I never know when I might next get knocked off-kilter with something that puts me in the position, once again, of choosing between my dignity and the serenity of our relationship.

Swallow shit, or ruin the entire afternoon?

[...]

This, then, is the terrible bargain we have regretfully struck: Men are allowed the easy comfort of their unexamined privilege, but my regard will always be shot through with a steely, anxious bolt of caution.

In particular, I was reminded of my father. Everyone, I think, has someone in their life resposible for sending them irritating forwarded email, and Daddy Pimms is mine. He either doesn't think (or doesn't care, I go back and forth on this) "Hmm... perhaps my daughter, being a woman, will be less than amused by this email about the hopeless folly of womankind," and sends me something like this:

---

From: daddypimms@thisisnotreal.com
Subject: Thought you'd like this...
To: kittypimms@girlishwhimsy.com

With the high rate of attacks on women in secluded parking lots, especially during evening hours, the Minneapolis City Council has established a 'Women Only' parking lot at the Mall of America Even the parking lot attendants are exclusively female so that a comfortable and safe environment is created for patrons.

Below is the first picture available of this world-first women-only parking lot in Minnesota ..

---

You know what's even more hilarious than the fact that women can't drive? The idea of women being sexually assaulted in parking lots!

I mean, you'd have to be a total humourless scold to find the framing of this joke really creepy, right? You have to totally miss the point, which is about driving and how women suck at it because they're probably putting on make-up or like, baking cookies in the glovebox. I mean, why would a man who has a daughter who often parks in parking lots at night (not to mention a wife who is also wont to do that) be at all turned off by that first paragraph?

And then there was this:

---

From: daddypimms@thisisnotreal.com
Subject: IT help...
To: kittypimms@girlishwhimsy.com

I think of you as my IT expert. [nonsensical question about his computer edited out]

---

Now, this I might actually find kind of funny, if he was saying something along the lines of "This is ironic, because I use you as my IT expert, a job many think women are unable to perform." But in fact, he was attempting to pay me a compliment by pointing me out as exceptional*. Because this image is a pretty accurate representation of a certain type of woman, but I should be able to laugh at them because I am not that type (i.e. not skinny, blonde, straight). In fact, I should want to laugh at them. He was giving me a golden opportunity to mock women who are prettier than me, and isn't that a favorite pastime of the ladies? When they aren't shopping for shoes and nagging their husbands?

And finally:

---

From: daddypimms@thisisnotreal.com
Subject: This is worrying
To: kittypimms@girlishwhimsy.com

Beer contains female hormones

Last month, Wits University and RAU scientists released the results of a
Recent analysis that revealed the presence of female hormones in beer.
Men should take a concerned look at their beer consumption.
The theory is that beer contains female hormones (hops contain
Phytoestrogens) and that by drinking enough beer, men turn into women .
To test the theory, 100 men drank 8 pints of beer each within a 1 hour
Period.


It was then observed that 100% of the test subjects :
1) Argued over nothing.
2) Refused to apologize when obviously wrong.
3) Gained weight.
4) Talked excessively without making sense.
5) Became overly emotional
6) Couldn't drive.
7) Failed to think rationally.
8) Had to sit down while urinating.

No further testing was considered necessary.
Send this to the men you know to warn them about drinking too much beer!

---

And so:

---

From: kittypimms@girlishwhimsy.com
Subject: Re: This is worrying
To: daddypimms@thisisnotreal.com

why in the world would a woman find that amusing?

you know, mom always tells me to just delete your email forwards without reading them, and I won't do it because it seems so incredibly rude.

and while it baffles me how anyone who has the slightest respect for the women in his life could be amused by this email, I can accept that it's the sort of thing guys enjoy amongst themselves without really thinking about it.

however it doesn't seem to me to require more than a millisecond of contemplation to realize that whatever you and your buddies might think it probably won't be entertaining to women, so sending it to me is at best an example of how little thought goes into your emails and a worst a deliberate attempting to be insulting (especially when i've already mentioned several times that i don't find that kind of humor cute).

either way, i'm left to ask myself why i don't just listen to my mother and delete your emails without reading them.

---

And so, he refused to email me for a week. Daddy Pimms is perhaps the world's most powerful sulker. Finally, as I always do, I apologized, because I would rather have a dad who talks to me than a dad who doesn't.

To quote Shakesville again:

There are the jokes about women, about wives, about mothers, about raising daughters, about female bosses. They are told in my presence by men who are meant to care about me, just to get a rise out of me, as though I am meant to find funny a reminder of my second-class status. I am meant to ignore that this is a bullying tactic, that the men telling these jokes derive their amusement specifically from knowing they upset me, piss me off, hurt me. [...] I am used as a prop in an ongoing game of patriarchal posturing, and then I am meant to believe it is true when some of the men who enjoy this sport, in which I am their pawn, tell me, "I love you."

*Ugh, how I hate exceptionalism "compliments." It's okay that I wear lots of dresses and don't know about sports, because I'm not "girly" to the point of being annoying. I've been praised many times for not "seeming" gay. I'm not one of "those" fat people (the kind that do nothing but eat donuts all day, presumably) so it's cool to engage in rampant fat-hating right in front of me.

This Exists

I saw one of these at the store the other day, and, upon returning home, had pretty much convinced myself that I'd hallucintated it.* Because why would such a thing exist? Who would invent it? Who would buy it? Why? Why?

I did a little Googling to find out what these things actually look like. From (shudder) feeling the package, I'd gotten the impression that it contained one giant, suggestively shaped log of cheese-powdered food product, but it appears that they're more like nuggets.

So really, they're just giant cheese balls. Which is... not really any more right. I just imagined what biting into one of those would be like, and it made the top of my mouth hurt. And let me tell you, I am a fan of Cheetos.






Oh, and by the by, folks, let me just warn you. Googling "giant cheetos" brings up some disturbing stuff.




Yeah... No thanks, I'm good.

*I'd spent about 14 hours in the car, driving from NYC to Michigan. Pretty much everything after we stopped at a Waffle House in Ohio around midnight felt like a hallucination. In fact, it was probably the Waffle House's fault. The whole experience was like a really bad absurdist play. The waitress handed my friend her toast with a cheerful "Here's your cheese steak."

Seen in PA

A sign for the Twilight Diner.

A girl in the car commented "Do they have vampires there?"

I wonder. And what do they serve? Deer's blood and patriarchal
repression?

----
Kitty Pimms
Sent from my iPhone

Vacationish

So, I guess I forgot the Sunday Poem again. Blame Ma and Pop Pimms, who were in town to see me act (they never get tired of that shit!).

And now I'm off to New York City* to bring some Midwestern high culture to the intellectual desert that is the East Coast (see what I did there?) so, unless I meet R. Pat in person or something equally momentous happens, there will be no blogging for awhile.

Talk amongst yourselves.

*Whenever I say that, in my head I hear those salsa comercial cows cry "Moo York City!?!?"

Anyone?

Cows?

Salsa?

Do kids today even know about those commercials?

----
Kitty Pimms
Sent from my iPhone

My New Acting Strategy

According to A.V. Club critic Nathan Rabin:

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, [Nicolas] Cage’s primary criteria for choosing roles seemed to be:

How ridiculous will my accent be? Will it sound like a dialect never spoken by anyone, ever, in the history of time?

How about facial hair? Can it look like fake hair haphazardly placed on me by a blind man with an odd sense of humor?

Will I be called upon to shamelessly overact or go completely fucking nuts?

I've totally got the first one going on in Comedy of Errors and the last one in Julius Caesar, (though no one will ever let me have facial hair).

But I think that I need make a greater effort to cram all three into every role I play.

The whole article is pretty hilarious.

Update

So. someone sent me a link to a gallery of Twilight inspired tattoos, which I am not even going to dignify with a rant. Suffice it to say, if you're old enough to get a tattoo, you should be old enough to know better.*

In other news, The Gothic Novel has been updated again, with a two new chapters and some slight formatting changes to make it easier to read maybe. However, there's something strange going on with the "previous" and "next" links that I'm in the process of fixing, so be aware that they might just whisk you off somewhere you don't want to be.

*Than to get a Twilight one, that is. I got no beef with tattoos in general. I have four myself, each more awesome than the last.

Observe:

Now that's a tattoo!

Mesmerizing

...if you ever want to turn your brain off for a little while, just take a look at this.

Happy Sunday!

Love,
Kitty Pimms

Sunday Poem

Caju Rain
Marcia Theophilo

Is it raining? It's raining caju:
soft waves of vermillon and yellow.
When Itajuba attracts a variety of trills, warbles
and other sounds
with trumpets, whistles and trocanos
we shall hug each other, Kuambu.
It's caju time, juice everywhere
fruits falling into our arms
in the month of September
Is it raining? It's raining caju.
In October the chestnut eyes
in your mouth, you feel my breasts
in your hands, downpours of love
flow of the river, fertility
of soil and of women, is it raining?
Caju rain invades your body
your blood, fire running
down your throat, rhythm in your hands.
"This is a little hammock"
and we'll remember
the Kaapos, the Tukanos
the Mundurukus, the Tupinambas
of the past.
Even the highest fruits are falling
at your feet, waterfall echoes
and juice are running on your lips
Is it raining? It's raining caju.