(no subject)

[cleolinda]

LJ is being a bitch about comments--they're coming to my email but not showing up onsite, which would be a refreshing reversal of the usual bug if it weren't SO DAMN ANNOYING.

Weird coincidence, given that I mentioned Old Yeller in V/15M: Sunday's Pearls Before Swine.

(Speaking of which, added a couple of icons to the V/15M folder and the Heroine Addict folder.)

amandatwop: "I was wondering if you would be so kind as to link a journal entry of mine in which I am looking for World of Warcraft players to answer a question for me.  I'm doing a paper on the language of WoW players and I wanted to get some players' opinions to balance out my research."

isolatr: An idea whose time has come.

I didn't comment on the horror of the Britney Spears Childbirthing Bearskin Rug statue last week, so... here it is. Please, dear Lord, no one bring me pictures from the "crowning of Sean Preston's head" angle.

I stole this from theferrett: "Go, Nornna."

It reminds me of a phrase I heard in one of my lit classes: "queering the norm." Which does have to do with "queer" sexuality, as reclaimed by the GLBT community, but also (as we discussed it) has to do with simply doing anything that isn't the status quo. This will frequently make people aligned with the status quo upset and angry. You can think of kids with their punk (or today, "punk") rock and edgy clothes irritating adults... but you can also think of the plain, quiet kid who gets teased because she isn't into fads like "punk" rock or overpriced low-rise jeans or obsessions with weight and body image or in-your-face, underage sexuality. (Which probably isn't a passing fad, sadly enough.) Nornna, at that link, is queering the norm. Sometimes rebellion is a form of conformity, and not rebelling pisses the other faux-rebels off. Queer the norm and walk your own line, kids.



ETA: Oh, I forgot to mention: lightning struck our air conditioning unit last night. A "big orange fireball," according to my mother, who saw it. Apparently our God is an angry God, or at least a very chilly one.

Comments

[plazmah.livejournal.com]

The Nornna thing reminds me of something a friend once said... that in high school there are three kinds of people: the ones who take conformity too seriously, the ones who take non-conformity too seriously, and everyone in between.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

And of the first two kinds, I don't even know which is worse.

[grand-marquis.livejournal.com]

I quite agree with you. Queering the norm should be just being whatever you are instead of following a trend or fad, even if that fad is "punk rebellion."
Plus, I've always thought it's less stressful that way. If you just be then you never have to worry if you're queering the norm enough.

[laurelin-kit.livejournal.com]

Re: queering the norm

Going through high school, I never went through outrageous "LOOK AT ME BE DIFFERENT!" phases or drastically altered my appearance. I had many changing interests, yes, but I kept everything else internalized. Now I'm slowly figuring out what I like and how I want to act, and a lot of my uber-rebellious friends have started backing away. Because apparently if I'm not uber-sexualizing myself in public and posting a million times a day about getting propositioned, I'm repressed.

The idiot girls in my high school drama club who dressed in black and said that "THE SEX PISTOLS ARE THE BEST BAND EVAR!!11!!" and were bisexual just to be cool pissed me off beyond belief. The one girl who actually did turn out to be bi got her heart broken time after time by those bitches and their need to fit in by rebelling. I don't have a problem with people who genuinely find their place in a nonconformist subculture, but it's the faux-rebellion that sets me on edge.

Just because you don't go party every night and drink and smoke and give blowjobs like candy and brag about getting construction workers to whistle at you and wear black eyeliner like it's going out of style and listen to My Chemical Romance until your ears bleed doesn't mean you're a waste of a human being or that you're repressed or anything of the sort.

A tad tl;dr, but faux-rebellion really makes me mad.

[plazmah.livejournal.com]

Going through high school, I never went through outrageous "LOOK AT ME BE DIFFERENT!"

And the thing with high school/middle school is that there is the "right" way to be different and the "wrong" way to be different. I never went through a "Watch me be different!" phase either... I was trying too hard to blend in with the walls. Because my peers already judged me as being different (and therefore worthy of ostracization), I didn't get an opportunity to rebel until college.

[livinthegoodlfe.livejournal.com]

Hey, don't know if you have seen it... but the Brits have let out their own response to "Lazy Sunday". Good stuff!

http://www.dailysixer.com/narniauk.shtml

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

lightning struck your air conditioner? Bizarre.

In other news, I linked you (http://www.notabenegw.com). :)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Aww, thanks!

Prepare to be insulted

[roseredhoofbeat.livejournal.com]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11945100/

The movie, as far as I can tell (haven't had the oppurtunity to see it) is basically saying that fascism = bad. So if you say that this movie bashes America, when really it bashes fascism, you're saying America is fascist. Which it ISN'T. If it was, the police would have shot Sheehan a long time ago, but she's alive and kickin'.

God, how I hate stupid people.

Re: Prepare to be insulted

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

For some reason, I saw "Scarborough Country" and went, "Oh, that idiot." I don't know what I've read of his before, but... not inclined to take anything he says seriously.

Because yeah: if you think it's anti-American, then you must also think that shipping gay people off to detention centers and scary politicians having pseudo-Nazi rallies and waging secret biowarfare on one's own people are American. You may not agree with the movie's views on terrorism (although personally, I have to agree with the movie's point that "rebels" are on your side and "terrorists" are on theirs; c.f. the Boston Tea Party), and you can dislike the movie, but I really do not think you can make the claim that the movie is anti-American.

[bluebren.livejournal.com]

This was my exact reaction to Gary Brolsma, when I discovered him. :) Unfortunately, YouTube is down right now, so I'll have to watch Nornna some other day, but thanks for pointing her out.

[vytresna.livejournal.com]

I was just going through your archive, and that MySpace thing? Makes no sense at all. I mean, if they're so intent on bringing down the Internet, why don't they mention criminals on other blogs? I mean, all the conspiracy seems to do is scream, "SUE MYSPACE!" Factoring in the fact that the Infowars guy goes on to say that George Bush will repeatedly crash the Internet when the time is ripe and unleash an uber-censored Internet and dominate us all in the two years he has left (wow, he's really been biding his time) and also believes that 9/11 was a big Bush conspiracy, and, well, you can forgive me for not buying it.

Allow me to remind you of the last big conspiracy theory you had? Only the bit about FEMA sitting on its mangy, unworthy ass turned out to be true. Charmaine Neville's account, escape deliberately cut off, boy murdered and stuffed in the freezer, and whatnot? Totally false.

If you're not convinced, well, Rupert Murdoch owns a lot of liberal media outlets too.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hey, I just like to discuss conspiracy theories. And in order to make the theory work, you would have to believe that Murdoch is sacrificing his own properties, because if this is what he wants to happen, he/MySpace won't fight back, whereas LiveJournal might mount a positive countercampaign if a whole lot of violent criminals turned up on its service. That's all I'm saying. It's interesting, in a "maybe it could be happening" kind of way.

As for New Orleans, yeah, a lot of accounts turned out to be fabrications or hyperbole. At the time, we had no way of knowing. And generally, when I found out something wasn't true during the period when I was blogging obsessively, I posted *that* as well, because the revelation of misinformation is just as important to me as the revelation of skullduggery. I'm just saying.

This is the third comment you've left on an old subject (I get them in my email) in about half an hour. It's just a discussion, okay? We're not boycotting anyone or protesting or anything.

[drpeprfan.livejournal.com]

Pearls Before Swine is so funny, my favorite characters are the crocodiles. ("Hey zeeba neighbah" *snicker* The zebra seeds being tomatoes strip was the best if you saw that.)

About Nornna: It's sad that people have sunk to the "OMGYOUMUSTENTERTAINMEORDIE!" level. That's what she likes to do, it's a free country. Those people who send her mean comments should be ashamed of themselves.

Just so you know, I plan to read your V for Vendetta after I see the movie, for the ultimate comedic experience. Oh, and freaky that your air conditioner got struck by lightning...it didn't break it, did it?

[eofs.livejournal.com]

My yearbook quote:

You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you're all the same.

They tried to not let me have it because it was two controversial.

The ones who conformed by rebelling were almost worse than the ones who just plain comformed to be honest.

I tried being someone else, but it never brought me happiness. Realising I could just be myself was liberating.

</ramble>

[punkiejeannien.livejournal.com]

good lord! (no pun intended) how many blows (another no pun intended) can that AC take?!

[thespianlizling.livejournal.com]

I hit upon the BritBirth thing earlier today and thought "Wow, I can't believe Cleo hasn't linkspammed this yet." I can't believe they're calling this thing "pro-life" -- hey, kids, come have babies if you want YOUR body to go through this experience! Although, with the fuss that it's creating over the pro-lifers, at least they're getting attention ... and press ... so in a way it's working. Weird. Also, why would you make a statue of a celebrity in childbirth when that particular celeb was very open about having had a C-section? Weird x3.
I know I'm bad and sick and wrong, but my morbid curiosity really does want to see the "crowning" angle. I mean, I saw autopsy photos from the Black Dahlia murder (that one from the '40s where the lady was hacked in half) and I lived ... this can't be *that* much worse. Right ... guys? Anybody?

[quenbolyn.livejournal.com]

Is it just me, or does that skeevy statue NOT LOOK ANYTHING LIKE BRITNEY SPEARS???????

Eh, maybe it's just me.

[emerybored.livejournal.com]

This wasn't the *new* $500 A/C unit, was it? Because that would really suck and I would have to feel doubly sorry for you and your family. Especially since (well, at least here in Austin) it's decided to be summer - 90 degree days, 70 degree nights. Ugh. Without A/C and a ceiling fan over my bed I don't know what I'd do.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was the same one. Again, sweetest words in the English language: "service contract." And we're up to about 80/60 day/night, and I've got my fan going, too (because I'm weak, and melt easily).

[andromeda-77.livejournal.com]

Apparently our God is an angry God, or at least a very chilly one.
*fits of giggles*

[karaway.livejournal.com]

laughed ice cream on my keyboard at Pearls before Swine - love the crocodiles, I have them all over my fridge. I don't get the Sunday paper though, so thanks for linking it :)

[bardintraining.livejournal.com]

Was the ball of fire the air-con unit itself after being struck, or was it all St.Elmo's-Fire-style ball-lightning?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

The latter, I think.

[edda.livejournal.com]

Re: AC--HOLY GOD, WOMAN! At least the house didn't catch fire...

And for every Britney Birthing Statue there's a Nornna. Thank you, Jesus.

[newsong.livejournal.com]

My favourite quote from the Norna post:


Bathroom writing: "THINK YOU STUPID, SIMPLE MINDED SHEEP! THINK!"

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Re: the Britney statue-- have you seen the artist's prior work? He made a scupture from the death mask of baseball player Ted Williams' cryogenically frozen decapitated head with an autographed baseball sitting in front. Link (http://www.theartnewspaper.com/special/bartlebooth/bartlebooth.asp) to death mask sculpture (which is not particularly gross). You have to scroll down somewhat-- it's in a sidebar.

[burntbythesun02.livejournal.com]

Is Portman really a heroin addict?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

"Heroine," as in female hero. Play on words.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

I watched a little bit of the Nornna videos, and I think that a lot of the people taunting her are doing so more out of confusion than anything else. She was documenting and showing aspects of her life that it generally isn't considered "polite" to document and show. (For example, the -extreme- up close and personal of her plucking chin hairs.) Something like that can be hard for some people to relate to because they don't have any previous interactions, either with friends or with the media, to tell them how they ought to react. And for a lot of people, the default reaction when they don't know how to react is scorn.

[sweetdaddydavid.livejournal.com]

I've been reading your comments the past two days and all I have to say is:

They are coming out of the freakin' woodwork lately, aren't they?

Shake them haters off C-Money.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heeeeeeee, C-Money.

Came here from a friend.

[robingal1.livejournal.com]

A friend linked me to your Movies in 15 Mins, which I adore and hungrily (sp?) await the book's American debut, and since then, I've been lurking about your lj.
May I friend you? ^^

Re: Came here from a friend.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Go ahead. : )

For those days when you need a pick me up.

[wumbawoman.livejournal.com]

According to this, you are ranked 38 in the LJ world!

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_nifty/141892.html

PS, click on the top 100.

Re: For those days when you need a pick me up.

[thespianlizling.livejournal.com]

Oh wow! Mucho congrats, Cleo. How very exciting. Break out the balloons! The banners! The band! The dancing! The food! The goat!
I'm eating a Cadbury Creme Egg, and it is hereby dedicated to you and your popularity. It's nummy ... mmmmm...