sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Tuesday, August 15th, 2017 02:58 pm
(this started out as a reply to this tumblr post)

When I first started posting about social justice online, on my fannish livejournal, I posted about racism a LOT, with lots of self righteous LET ME EXPLAIN A THING. And then two of my non-white(*) friends said it was ruining my blog for them: one because she felt like I was speaking over her experiences, which didn’t match the monolithic How POC Feel Narrative I was ‘explaining’, the other because it was causing my clueless white friends to say racist crap in the comments. I had to fight back a defensive “But DON’T YOU WANT ME TO FIGHT RACISM??” reaction.

Ten years later and I’m still trying to figure out how to discuss racism in ways that actually help fight racism, and make the spaces I control supportive of POC/non-white people, rather than simply making the loudest possible noise about how it’s REALLY BAD YOU GUYS.
Read more... )
sqbr: pretty purple pi (femininity)
Sunday, September 26th, 2010 04:53 pm
Female sexual dysfunction discussion bingo, all the things that come up reliably in any discussion of the subject.

I've been meaning to post a link to Feminist with Sexual Disfunction for ages, even if you don't have sexual disfunction they're just a really good general feminist/sexuality etc blog and have a unique POV.

One of the reasons I've been putting it off is that I feel that, as part of trying to reduce the stigma around sexual disfunction, I should mention that I have had issues with that sort of thing myself, though at this point it's only around the middle of the list my many irritating incurable poorly diagnosed health problems that make life less fun. Not something I feel like talking about at all but there you are.

I find it interesting if rather depressing how the "It's all big Pharma making healthy women think they're broken" attitude contrasts with the "Clearly if you don't feel like having sex you must have some medical condition" crap pushed on asexual people. In both cases the experiences and opinions of actual people count for nothing in the face of The Way Things Are Supposed To Work.

(Also, I hope it goes without saying but: Please do not say any of the things in those bingo squares here)
sqbr: I lay on the couch, suffering an out of spoons error (spoons)
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 06:11 am
So I have a major problem with the blog FWD/Forward: every time I think about making a post based on one of the ideas it explores, they make a new inspiring post on a totally different subject. Damn them!

Anyway: if you're interesting in disability and/or feminism, you should give it a look.
sqbr: And yet all I can think is this will make for a great livejournal entry. (livejournal)
Saturday, October 20th, 2007 01:14 pm
A meme: I was tagged by An9ie, and decided it might be interesting to find the three lj posts that I most wish to share with the world. It inspired me to make a champagne blogging tag for the posts I like, which I will almost certainly forget/misspell in future.
memememe meme )
And mine....

Sophie's Secret Lj: A Geography Lesson, Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie, I did warn you!


The easiest way to copy and paste the code is to view the page's source and then copy and paste the html into your blogging software's html editor.


I'm not going to tag anyone, but feel free to either continue the meme, or just think about which three posts from your lj/blog you would most want strangers to read.

Tags:
sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006 02:37 pm
As I said this time last year in my blog:



I have decided to boycott major card manufacturers on holidays designed to sell greetings cards. Since the people who are affected by this are either members of my family or Cam, and thus used to my foibles, I should be able to get away with it :)
Acceptable sources of cards are charities (Such as Community Aid Abroad), small local companies/individuals (such as my local art gallerys hand-made cards) and of course ones own creativity.

An advantage of the anti-cards stance is it puts single people at a definite advantage, which I say they deserve after all the smug sentimentality they they have to put up with from we coupled folk.

Viva la Revolution!



This year (2006) Cam took me out to dinner(*) yesterday (he has roleplaying tonight), which was nice and happily free of those darn rose salespeople.

(*)I have $5 in the bank, stupid delayed pay+ automatic charity donation I forgot about.
Tags:
sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Monday, January 23rd, 2006 12:38 pm
Simulcast over blog and livejournal!

Well...I've decided to do it. The realtionship was stable and happy, and I thought I could compromise on our differeneces but in the end...I had to leave.

That's right, I'm saying goodbye to Blogger and moving over to livejournal. This makes me very sad, since I won't have as much control over the layout (no more tiny chickens! No more spirally dividers!!) and I won't be sqbr any more :( But despite all that lj has suckered me over with it's commenting system (specifically notifications on replies for people other than me) and the fact I won't have to deal with the feed/blog dichotomy(*).

I'm don't know what I'll do with this blog now (I'm sure I'll think of something) but for the moment it will lay idle, so you should ignore http://sqbr.blogspot.com/ and http://syndicated.livejournal.com/sqbr/ and instead direct your attention to http://alias-sqbr.livejournal.com/.

Before you complain that the sidebar is unreadable, I'm going to fiddle with the colours some more later(**). You may notice that some of my old locked entries have been unlocked. Those of you not on my friends list may be happy to see you weren't missing much, I just wanted to keep things neat. Also I'll port over the more interesting blog entries when and if it feels necessary.

So, goodbye old friend. The Roost of the Purple Chicken is dead. Long live the Roost of the Purple Chicken!

(*)That's right, people who comment on the feed, you broke my spirit. Are you happy now?
(**)In case any of you are wondering, I chose this layout becuase it allows a very small amount of css, meaning I could make my own header and set the background.
sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Saturday, February 12th, 2005 04:33 pm
Originally from my blog.

Ingredients:
-2 cups rice bubbles
-1 tablespoon peanut butter
-1 teaspoon margerine/butter
-100g marshmallows

Directions:
Grease and line tin (20cm square is a little big but ok)
Microwave first 3 ingredients for about 10 sec, till marshmallows puff up.
Mix in rice bubbles and put mixture into tin. Flatten.
Cool in fridge, then cut into squares and put into an airtight container.
Tags:
sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Sunday, October 10th, 2004 04:13 pm
This was originally posted on my blog. A year and a half has passed, my feelings haven't changed, apart from happiness at the recent P&P having a more accurate Lydia :)

Rant! )
sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Friday, June 25th, 2004 04:30 pm
(Originally from my blog)

Ingredients

One Egg
1/4 Cup Caster Sugar
1/2 Tsp Vanilla Essence (Or other sponge flavouring ie citrus rind)
2 Tbsp Self-raising flour

Method

Break egg into 2 cup capacity microwave proof cup. Beat with fork/hand-whisk etc, slowly add sugar, essence. Fold in flour. Microwave for around 1.5 minutes. Eat immediately.

Also nice if you add a bit of jam and use less sugar.

Adapted from an oven-bake 6 serve apple-sponge cake recipe from the back of the CSR caster sugar packet. I have been looking for a one-person lowish fat (ie not 25% butter!) microwave pudding for years! So now I share it with you :) The texture is a little wierd but it tastes ok.
Note that self-raising can very easily be made from plain flour and baking powder.
sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Thursday, June 24th, 2004 08:34 pm
This was my first blog post. My first lj post is over here.

Reasons for not having a typical livejournal/blog

I have for many years gone on about how I should never have a livejournal/blog. At the same time I keep coming across things that I would like to do with one. I have finally decided to succumb, but to avoid the "typical" livejournal/blog stuff that I think would be a Bad Thing in my case.

  • Journal of events. My life simply isn't that interesting, there'd be like 3 notable things a year.
  • Socialising- I don't get much emotional fulfillment from online interactions that aren't one-on-one (And even then would prefer real life ones) If I use up my anecdotes etc online I'll have less to say in person which would ultimately lead to loneliness. Bad.
  • Getting things of your chest- Either I can talk about it to someone in real life, or I shouldn't be putting it on the internet. Anything I feel uncomfortable saying to someone I'd probably feel uncomfortable knowing they'd read on my blog.
  • talking about myself- I do this enough already! Not to say I won't do it here :)

Reasons I still probably shouldn't have a livejournal

  1. I'm tactless and have occasional alarming lapses of judgment. I'm also pretty bad at expressing myself. All this results in me deciding to say something I probably shouldn't, accidentally saying something different, and doing so in the worst possible way. This is a general problem with me and communication but the more people read/hear something I say the more likely I horribly offend someone, especially in a medium like this where it's so easy to forget exactly how large your possible audience is. Still, I've sort of got the hang of mailing lists/internet fora etc and this shouldn't be that much worse. Consider yourself warned, though. I HOPE to force myself to wait 24 hours before posting. We shall see.
  2. Man, do I love talking about myself. This is going to be soooooo boring. But hey, noones forcing you to read it :)
  3. I have this irritating tendency to write in numbered lists and bullet points after 3 years of doing a Phd in computational mathematics.


Past Flip-Flops
To the people to whom I have loudly railed against the possibilty of me ever getting a livejournal/blog, I can only say this: I am a big fat liar. It is actually not uncommon for me to loudly proclaim an opinion then all of a sudden change my mind quite radically. Some examples:

  • Being atheist is stupid
  • Vegetarianism is irredeemably stupid
  • Vegetarianism is the clearly more moral than eating meat.(My views now are more complex)
  • I am not going to do honours
  • I am not going to do a phd
  • Never go out with a unisfan
  • Rock/popular music sucks (No, not just some of it. ALL of it)
  • I'm never going to have children.(No, I haven't done this yet! But I intend to, one day)


The thing is in retrospect I can generally understand my reasons for having the opinion, at least to start with. Once I start to doubt the opinion I'm thinking about it a lot, and when I'm thinking about something I talk about it. So I say the opinion even more, until I decide I don't agree any more at which point I stop!

Uses for this blog

Things I would go around telling every person I bumped into except they'd get annoyed. Things I'm going around telling everyone anyway. Ideas, things that happen to me etc

Those 3 interesting life events a year.(For example...)

Little rants, questions etc that would be off topic and selfish to bring up in most conversations or mailing lists, but might be of interest to anyone foolish enough to go to a site devoted entirely to me.

The Golden Rule for things I put online
"Put unto internet that which you would have others put unto the internet"
This allows for a lot of weird personal obsessions like cheap stained glass substitutes but generally helps keep down things like me going on about how much I like radiohead. I shall try hard to apply that rule here.

Why I decided to succumb
The main thing I think was a number of my close friends getting them, so that I actually read some other than ones like Angriest which I'm just not going to be able to write, or random ones when I'm bored. It means I have an audience, I'd feel pretty weird writing and knowing none of my friends would read it.

Also I kept coming up with genuine things to put in one that obey The Golden Rule. Like site updates and questions I'd like peoples opinions on and stuff.

So there you go!