The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Donald Delny:

#19, Caroline, Financial paperwork?
I resorted to an accordion folder - cheap plastic thing from Target. Bills to be paid go in the front with the checkbook (with the stamps!), paid bills go chronologically in the other slots: utilities in one, bank & credit cars statements in another. End of the year tax stuff gets its own slot.

This has saved my hide more than once! I can grab it and pay bills anywhere (even at cons), and the chronological system makes it so I can find stuff at the cost of an hour or so. This was a great improvement over not paying bills on time, and never being able to find paid bills.

Anyway, I think it worked for me because the system was so 'stupid' - just putting stuff in, in the order it came in. All my more complicated systems died due to guilty neglect. So! There's hope!

(And yeah, eventually the accordion file gets full, but there are these banker's boxes, see...)

Dangerous Clown People & sexual repression in Japan?

A.J., you mentioned Japanese "sexual repression". As far as I can tell it is so different from Western style repression as to be unrecognizable. Everyone, all the time, are participating in external roles, in order to keep society running smoothly, and everyone is judged on how well they keep to the code role. But the American-typical expectation that what is on the outside is also on the inside doesn't seem to be there.

Personal desires, are just that: personal, enclosed, and therefore permitted within the wrapping. Anecdotally, being gay is fine - provided you marry and produce offspring to fulfill your obligation to family and society.

As far as I can tell, this is why certain routines in anime comedy work. For example, the protagonist protests that she is not hungry (external wrapping), only to be outed by a rumbling stomach (internal desire). This is part of why the embarrassing is considered hilarious - I think.

I will now meditate on the meaning of carefully wrapped gifts in Japanese culture.

Sean Sakamoto, I would love your input on this. I might have gotten this completely wrong.

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