how public, like a frog

[langwidere]

My cat had to have one of her canine teeth pulled. Last Wednesday. The other canine tooth is beginning to loosen, too, and will have to come out sooner or later (let’s hope for "later" — I’m actually hoping to wait until it’s almost out on its own and can be yanked with forceps like the first one, because she is almost fifteen years old and has asthma and I don’t want her sedated unless there’s no other option). Of course, she was fine as soon as she got out of the cat carrier when we came from the vet’s office, and I spent four days crying intermittently because I love her to pieces and the only heirloom bequeathed to me by my bevy of Irish-American ancestors is the Sentimental Weeping Idiot gene. (The rest of her teeth are, to quote the vet, "fantastic for fifteen." So, that’s weird, probably, but really good? Please?)

Anyway. So, I still have people’s Christmas presents sitting on the piano. In the future I will invent some kind of new Christmas/Valentine’s Day hybrid celebration in order to clear my conscience in these sorts of situations. I was able to upgrade most of the cards, however. ♥

I used WineBottler to install Internet Explorer 7 — and check out that awesome interface! I am guessing the real IE7 does not quite look exactly like that — and then I used it to test my sites for cross-platform awesomeness:



Whhhhhut? Warn the Duke also looks horrible on my iTouch:



WHY? WHY IS THAT HAPPENING? I CUT THE BACKGROUND IMAGE RIGHT OUT OF THE GRAPHIC, USING PREVIEW. HOW COULD THEY POSSIBLY HAVE DIFFERENT ALPHA SETTINGS?

I’m also thinking of maybe using FontSquirrel’s @FontFace generator to replace all the Helvetica Neue and the other proprietary, jaggedly-rendered fonts with open-source alternatives that look exactly like them. Do you think that is a good idea, or what?

Um. Look! A photo of a black lady on Ffffound! First one ever, out of a whole year on the feed. Next, maybe I’ll see an Asian person! Very exciting. You are allowed to look at Asian person-generated artwork on Ffffound, a lot, because it is hott — but not at the actual people, who mostly fail to adhere to the universal Western standard of beauty defined as "people who look exactly like my friend’s 15-year-old cousin Jeff, but with long hair and tube socks and after an extended battle with a particularly virulent strain of stomach flu, which he lost." Because that is just what sexy is, here in the diverse and prejudice-free melting-pot that is the United States of America’s repulsive digital social-media cesspools.

Speaking of which: I joined a new service! It’s called Readernaut. It’s basically useless and stupid and really, really buggy, but I’ve been having fun making mean comments about crappy import manga, so there’s that.

Is Skins not a British show which has been on for like four or five years, or am I Ripannina Van Winkle over here, or what?

I missed Blogging for Choice Day. Oops.

And speaking of which! I just found a thing, which is called The Feminism 101 Blog. It has as clear a description of the male gaze as I think can be found online, and is worth reading for that only. (Although they left out Lacan, for some reason?) Which is, you know, the objection most of us have to those disturbing, sad little naked-lady tumblrs (see above). The girls are always terribly vacant and mouth-breathey and possibly high and unkempt and so victimized-looking, and they’re presented — probably by unattractive white/male tools — as sexual eidolons. It’s weird. Men are strange, and gross. I have never been able to understand why we are supposed to want them to like us. I know postmodernist (post-postmodernist?) feminism is kind of turning into performance art with the vagina necklaces and the stripper poles and the personhole covers and all, but it’s still an embattled discipline. It probably doesn’t hurt to remember exactly how much better feminists have left the world, sometimes, and to realize how much further we all have to go.

But I’m not wearing a vagina necklace no matter what.

SOME LINKS, FOR JESUS BETTY FRIEDAN:
1. This Paul Krugman story is hilariously topped with the words "Can Europe Be Saved?" (implication: no!!!!), but it’s actually about the ill-considered adoption of the Euro. It is not interesting, but if you like that sort of thing it could be useful, potentially.
2. This is the very hilarious review of 43’s awesome novel Decision Points, by the London Review of Books. I just now noticed it exists, because it was linked by Wonkette. I am not up in the London Review of Books on the regular.
3. From The Guardian, a piece on the fiction/internets ouroboros which I have not yet finished reading myself.


These are better screenshots of my new boyfriend, who looks, upon close inspection, like he wandered out of Labyrinth, limping, after David Bowie was finished with him. I hope he will be named something like 'Valumphis Stagne.'

This season of American Idol is too boring even for my granny.

On the other hand, this is very funny.
ETA link, because the iframe wouldn’t load.

I recently learned that I am the last person in all the world who downloads fansubs. I think this is because I originally visited Crunchyroll back when it was staffed by, I surmised, photosynthetic multi-celluar plant-people who were heroically fansubbing Naruto despite the fact that they lacked formal brain structures and spoke neither English nor Japanese — and I had my delicate sensibilities offended to an extreme degree. Also, I am not paying for fansubs. Ahaha! HAHAHA! What? Really? Are you kidding me? People are paying for fansubs? Voluntarily? Why? You kids today, with your fancy bullet trains and your Lawrence Welk records and your super-sweet iced tea.

Is that it? I think that’s it.

Next week: Sherlock! Probably. (And the Kindle.)