The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by miriam beetle:

emm,

Lately (at SFO, but not at JFK, DEN, or ORD) I have been pulled aside for a pat-down search ... because I was wearing a full skirt. We're talking at least ten flights in the last year.

Needless to say, guys in extremely baggy pants are not getting the same treatment.

my partner wears a utilikilt like 90% of the time. he also happens to be solidly built, asian, & sometimes mohawked (allright, so i can't help showing off). guess who gets "randomly selected for a personal search" every time? (we fly a dozen times a year, including through sfo.)

even though it's a rivet-filled garment, it never sets off metal detectors, & you know, more of his body is visible than the average male traveler's. it seems more about punishing nonconformity, like with your skirt.

jim,

At least two of those movies, the Grinch and Van Helsing, sucked mightily.

only if you're talking about the jim carrey version, not the chuck jones version. i love the latter passionately, & i hate christmas.

um, i'm talking about the chuck jones grinch movie, of course. i don't think jones ever took on the dracula mythos, & we are poorer for it.

i don't have time to read back right now, so apologies if this's been covered: is anyone else not getting the livejournal feed? the last three or four posts haven't appeared on my friends page.

stefan,

I wonder if they're playing along or sick of the whole deal.

playing along (i heard a cbc program on the whole phenomenon). cause in the book, all the werewolves, the immortal enemies of vampires, are from the nearby native american tribe.

yes, in twilight, the nonwhites are half-animals. how very coincidental.

ginger,

you're like soylent green that way?

carol,

that you should exclude mascbots (?) from your universe?!

butchbots?

terry,

Heck, I intend to get several utilikilts

i recommend it. they look good on many body types, & i also appreciate your giving me an excuse to show off my partner in a custom-painted number.

obBaking: naomi libicki's miraculous strudeltorial. really, the pictures are worth clicking over for.

(she's an occasional commenter here, but she cannot be trusted to toot her own horn.)

david,

Not unless they also reinforce his shoulder, back, hips, etc...

well, it could be an arm that he could brace to the ground, like a jack. less supermanly, still way useful.

not that you need or seek my approval, but i agree your item two is the best solution to the problem.

my husband's mum says "girlfriend" about her female friends, & it bugs me, although it is so not a bone worth picking. i think it is a generational thing.

i'm a semi-out bisexual, but not to his family, though i try to drop hints. so they at least think i'm a staunch straight ally who will get on their case if they say anything too heterosexist.

i think i'm more physically demonstrative with female friends than male friends because of the whole wrong-idea-getting (in contrast to lee's experience, i am way more wary of guys with girlfriends/wives, cause i don't want to cause strife). but i've also held myself back from physical gestures (towards a straight woman) that i'm sure two straight women wouldn't think twice about, both because for me it means more & because i'm terrified of being a sexual harasser.

i'm out to all my friends, & i've never, to my knowledge, flirted with another queer female friend unless we were both clear on how attracted we were to each other & how far it was allowed to go. (well, ok, there's one relationship where we each weren't sure the other was queer, & i had to consciously push the flirting to what i figured was beyond straight-girl flirting, & then we had "the talk." & now we flirt with intention, if not, alas, proximity.)

terry,

i've heard "the church of st. mattress." the jewish equivalent is "congregation sha'arei sheyna."*

*"the gates of slumber." lots of synagogues are the gates of something or other.

madeline,

i saw arlo guthrie in concert once, in ohio. don't know the year, but the following story will help pin it down, i'm sure, for some.

so he sang that song. & for the verse about the sign that says no trespassing, he substituted it saying "proposition 187" & nothing on the other side, which side was thus made for you & me.

proposition 187 was another one of those majority-rule-to-strip-minorities-of-human-rights california initiatives, proposing to bar the children of illegal immigrants (including, one assumes, children who are natural born us citizens) from attending public schools. again, people who know more about california legal history can correct me, but it didn't pass or at any rate become law.

which is all to say, that i'm sure you have at least woody's son's blessing to use the song to fight against californian hate propositions.

this was in the room of course, not the showers, where nudity in front of your peers was fine.

nerdycellist, debcha,

from my time in uniform, i can confirm that stripping it off was indeed something i'd do in the first seconds of entering my barracks room/home. & i bet that minidress is more uncomfortable than my acrylic fatigues were.

as far as roommates, it wasn't necessary to be completely covered, but you weren't supposed to be completely uncovered either. the rule in the army (& in my apartment shared with three girls pre-army) seemed to be that you could show your bra & torso, or your underpants & legs, but not both at once.

if you were topless, you had to have shorts on, if you were bottomless, you ought to have a shirt on. just a data point.

winona ryder didn't look like she was supposed to look too young, but she did look like a person in age-advance makeup, which was distracting.

arkessian,

... why you named your newest hamster after my mother.

is your mother my second cousin? (she has a twin sister named maggie aggie, where the maggie is probable magda but i forget what the aggie could be.)

caroline,

... but i've met keith k.'s wife, so that can't be you...

shaggy? sparky?

i don't know whether this link goes here or in the amazon thread (for queer visiblity), but it reminds me of when ginger, & i think heather, & others were talking about the different kinds of lesbians there are (golf, uniformed, etc.).

watercolour cartoons of couples, from a show currently hanging in portland.

i wasn't previously familiar with the artist, but these made me smile and smile.

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