Thorns

So, the universe (via it's earthly representative linkspam) has kindly decided to give me a real world example of the hypothetical derailing conversation I came up with.

(And yes, I know, it doesn't fit the pattern EXACTLY. It's still pretty close to have happened within less than two weeks)

First: I just read this Bones fic "Someone loses an eye" description of Amanda Palmer's new album and it's really ableist.
And then inevitably All these posts about disability are making me feel silenced. Don't they realise how that hurts my feelings as a woman female artist? Our voices NEVER get to be heard, and now these oversensitive disabled people are telling ME what I can and cannot write! Helen Keller would be ashamed.(*)
which of course leads to
I think it's really important that we focus on the way women's voices artists are silenced.

Something I did not have an equivalent of in my post but which is an important part of the dynamic: a slightly separate but equally valid discussion of the issues to do with the project involving sexual abuse. EDIT: In my opinion a perfect example of how sometimes two different discussions around a topic can exist simultaneously without either of them being a derail.

*waits for someone to accuse me of being pro censorship*

(*)That's just in one section, the overall post goes in multiple contrary directions at once.

There's been much discussion about the absurd gender bias in the hottest 100, which I've been somewhat avoiding until I got around to listening to the recording I made (Though thanks to the east coast time difference I still have to listen to 100-80 and 50-30 ish, luckily the website has streaming for the next few days)

Anyway: 2 out of 100 with female vocalists, and (I think?) 4 with women in the band is pretty pathetic. I looked into my iTunes library and out of my 230 five star songs, 58 have female vocalists(*).

I was inspired to make a poll of other people's favourite songs with female vocalists(*). I've always wanted to try out Google forms :) It's a bit dodgy, but on the plus side the only effort I have to go to collate the results is pressing "Sort column" :D Is there any better (and equally low-effort) way to make this sort of poll?

I'm not really interested in discussing the whys and wherefores because I really don't know (or care, to be honest) that much about the music industry. Go check out Was the Hottest 100 Of All Time sexist? asks Triple J’s Hack or any of the other posts on the subject. Also purrdence has another aleternative poll.

(*)I don't know about you, but I don't pay enough attention to who's in a band to know which ones have women in them unless I can hear them singing.

Wow. I feel terrible. I think I'm going to have to judge the "working three days a week" experiment a failure, especially since one of those days was spent restfully watching other people speak during a four hour(!) meeting.

I'm currently watching "Meeting People is Easy", a Radiohead doco I recorded off ABC (Unexpected side effect of Foxtel: recording all that cool stuff off ABC and SBS have I forget to watch) It's so utterly them, a bunch of diconnected half scenes and songs with no explanation or context, often cut off mid sentence. And yet somehow it ALL MAKES SENSE. Back in about 1997 their official webpage consisted almost entirely of mostly white pages with disconnected images and snatches of lyrics, with random words being links to other pages, and clicking in far enough led to strange things, and their merchandise page and "As a reward for clicking this far, have a free t-shirt design saying "Property of the Radiohead Corporation"". I thought it was the coolest thing ever, in my defense I was 17 :D It had an unforunate effect on my homepage which I first constructed around that time, the only real remaining vestige being the scenic route.

I love their music, but I get the feeling I'd find them unbearably intimidating and up themselves in person :) (Well, that and I turn into a gibbering 12 year old girl when I meet famous people, it's terrible) I've never cared much about the musicians who make the music I like much anyway, I get more personally attached to writers. (Although, in the very unlikley event Radiohead reads this but you never know..I LOVE YOU GUYS NO OFFENSE SQUEE FLAIL)

Does anyone else think Thom Yorke looks kind of like John Simm? No? Ok, just me then.

It was supposed to be 20 shuffled songs but that's just too many. Also I skipped a few of the less amusing ones.

So, my playlist (in my pants):
-Finlay Quaye: Sunday shining in my pants
-The Cruel Sea- The honeymoon is over in my pants
-The Whitlams - buy now pay later in my pants
-Tracy Chapman - Baby can I hold you in my pants?
-Cruel Sea : Anybody but you in my pants
-Soundgarden: Blow up the outside world in my pants
-Pearl Jam: Nothing as it seems in my pants

Well! The big day out was fun. It would have been more fun if I wasn't (a)Utterly buggered from lack of sleep and (b) Unable to stand very long (let alone dance) due to my stupid knees. So I spent most acts sitting at the back in the shade (where there was any), and if it was really rocking I swayed slightly from a cross legged position :)

For anyone who hasn't been: they take up like half the Claremont showgrounds, four of the grass areas being turned into stages with the two biggest on the Really Big oval (only one of the two was used at a time). There was also this fenced off area called LilyWorld which looked intriguing (the entrance was two giant eyes on stalks) but it needed I.D. Most of the food outlets are opened (complete with crazy showground prices), along with lots of stalls all aimed at the young-rock-fan crowd. Not as many free samples as I would have liked, but I managed not to spend a cent with my packed lunch and 1 litre bottle of frozen water.

I didn't get much out of any of the Headline Acts on the two big stages since with the exception of Faker at the begining sitting down meant being waaaay back in the stands. The only time this made me Very Sad was the White Stripes, since by this time I was a few steps shy of Sudden Catastrophic Failure so sat there barely able to hear them over "Tainted Love" coming from Lilyworld for like two songs then went home :( Someone needs to lend me one of their albums so I can play it Very Loudly and pretend like I'm at a concert.

On the other hand the smaller stages were pretty cool. The perth bands one was so empty the "mosh pit" up by the stage was like 1 person thick, so I "moshed" (stood and swayed slightly) to Red Jezebel just because I could :)

My absolute favourites were Youth Group and Sarah Blasko (who I hadn't really heard of before looking her up for the BDO, and now I'm pondering getting an album!). Henry Rollins spoken word was pretty cool too, and it's nice to say I've seen Iggy Pop and the Beasts of Bourbon, even if I didn't actually get that much out of them. (I know, heretic, I did try)

Saw a bunch of people which was fun, but not gyges_ring because he wasn't really there.