(no subject)

I love how housing ads in the Bay Area have come to sound so much like
personal ads. Possibly more than the personal ads themselves.

Some Things In Common

Over the weekend, hanging out with my family, I learned that:

a) both my brother and I have trouble reading clock faces.

b) many members of my family failed to memorize their multiplication
tables, and instead use some variation of finger-counting.

The last one was particularly interesting for me. I really struggled with
5th grade math at the exact point at which we were supposed to memorize
our multiplication tables.

I spent a summer with Mom in her lab, doing a page a day of math problems.
Then I got to sixth grade, and placed out an entire year into seventh
grade math.

Somewhere in there, I just started finger-counting on my own. I never did
learn my tables. And yes, I still do it.

Mom, whom it should be noted was a math major in college and is an
engineer by training, just sort of shrugged at the news that we all
finger-count and said, "whatever gets you the right answer." I love my
family.

(no subject)

It's still my birthday month, and that means that it's the perfect time to
enable my sweet tooth with a bag of those new Dove chocolate plus caramel
pieces. Before the end of the weekend, preferably.

further thoughts on the punk thing

Thinking more about punk style and parody, I thought I'd just point out that parodying femininity/gender norms was just one area that what I am going to have to call "classic" punk style engaged in. Punks also liked to parody/mock/subvert military and paramilitary style, for example.

These parodies, too, were routinely misunderstood by the mainstream gaze. The controversy over the appropriation of swastikas and other fascist symbols is one example. Another example is why I haven't worn military fatigues in more than a decade. But I used to, and it was definitely with this sort of conscious intent.

Just thinking out loud, here. Also wanted to move the focus away from femme-ininity per se and open up the picture a bit. (b/c, as mr_heathen rightly pointed out, not everyone is involved in parodying sexiness when we do the things we do with our clothes and presentation and stuff.)

Also thinking about how as I and other punks I know get older, we tend to abandon these sorts of gestures and find a more subtle, but often still challenging, style.

Anyway.