sandbox GAYS

thx freddy

psych problems are the worst. sorry, surm. i'm long-term crazy, so if you have any questions maybe i can help.

Stevie, that sounds intense and exciting.

u do Jess? maybe i should IM u sometime

maybe on the book of face

I like that – the Book of Face.

I'm long-term depresso (no diagnosis or treatment till I was 18, but it seems to go back to about 6th grade), with attendant anxieties, esp. social anxiety. The only DSM diagnosis a doc ever shared with me was hypothymia, which is a good shortcut label (basically a chronic, low-grade depression - I think the DSM may have changed the term), though I have a wider range of ups and downs that I don't think are described by that term.

^^ That paragraph reminds me of what I hear from Brits about Americans being very/too open about their psychological health.

thank u for being open j

oh no i don't like to read sad surm. it seems so out of character and not how things should be.

<3 Big Freedia <3

A guy I met in therapy said he first tried to kill himself when he was 9 by lying face down in a puddle. He tried that a few times, he said. Later he tried more effective means. The guy was a mortician.

oh did you go eric?

(also, jesse: cyclothymia?)

Uh, apropos of... Never mind

Oh weird xps don't work the same way in the sandbox.

Rivergbx, it was called hypothymia.

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?word=hypothymia

No no no! DYSthymia!

I remembered bc Jenny and I joked about dystopia.

In any case, labeling is libeling, but when a term is a meaningful shortcut, it's useful. (see also: feminism)

I totally did go, and I'm absolutely glad I did. Was a little preoccupied with the fact that there were only about 3 or 4 not-white people in the audience, but it was still a great, booty-gyrating show.

yeah my friend (not white btw) said it was great

Minnesota booty battles are o_0

omg I wonder if she did one

I'd think a Minnesota booty battle would involve a pedestrian bottleneck in three feet of snow.

What did she look like? Was she a little thick?

If so, she won the shit out of that battle.

Wtf is a booty battle? "Minnesota booty battle" sounds euphemistic.

nah she is a tiny (5') nigerian gal

I haven't been dancing in nine months; my chassis needs a workout.

Yeah, don't think I saw her on stage, what with Freedia's gyrations.

tabes! are you having a fb article with that guy from that nyt poetry article right now?

fb argument that is

Is table registered here? I just saw some comments of t's go by on the ticker thing but when I tried to click on one, it said it was no longer available.

lol! i saw that too and got kind of excited.

Dude update: we've been seeing each other a LOT. In fact, I think the only day we didn't see each other at all was Tuesday. The dinner/movie night thing was amazing and things are moving super quickly and I feel like we're p much "dating" or something at this point. We've talked about not rushing into a relationship and getting to know each other better first but we've spent a few nights cuddling each other to sleep and it's fucking awesome.

:)

WTF. Of COURSE there is someone in the comments defending that guy! He makes an convoluted and verbose argument that maybe the guy just didn't know it was wrong, unethical, illegal, and grounds for disbarment to make sex a secretary's job duty. Apparently the guy was distracted by people's misapprehension that he was too rich.

It is common sense that is missing in this situation. We are intensely focused on other things, particularly getting educated, and then trying to earn a living in a world in which, even if we just barely make enough money to cover overhead, almost every person we deal with, including many who should know better, considers us over-paid. Such concerns can and do relegate the normal rules of interaction to a dangerously low position on the priority list.

Scott Thompson on gays being "poodles" for women and his variation on It Gets Better: "You fucking punch him in the face."

http://www.pridesource.com/article.html?article=49944

http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01303/WEB-bronson-poo_1303081cl-5.jpg

(speaking of gays/canada/poodles)

Oh, there's my post that didn't show up on the Chicago thread.

lol

yay @ stevie, btw. i have not been good at remembering that sandbox exists.

i did have an argument with that kid, Alex Dimitrov (fuck him, fuck googleproofing).

he was praising Rita Dove's recent defense of an anthology she edited that received a poor review from Helen Vendler, an evil poetry witch if there ever was one.

anyway.

I said:
What I'm wondering is whether such an anthology is necessary when so many others are already out there. Neither Dove nor Vendler are my cup of tea— Dove because her work doesn't really do much with words except put them on paper, line-breaks seemingly thrown in at random, and Vendler because she's snotty and racist and a bit too invested in dead white men. I do feel, however, that Dove's stance of making poetry 'accessible' to be condescending and infantilizing, and can agree with any criticism on those points.

In the end, though, I have no idea as to how this has anything to do with what we, as poets and writers, are doing on a day-to-day basis? Both Vendler and Dove are incredibly successful, tenured, and in my opinion, fucking gross.

Dimitrov:
I don't see how you can say "I have no idea as to how this has anything to do with what we, as poets and writers, are doing on a day-to-day basis." What we are exposed to has everything to do with who we become and who we are. Who is excluded, included, etc. -- all of this matters. That should be obvious by now. To pretend that realities like race, class, gender, etc., have nothing to do with poetry or criticism, is to pretend that we don't have real lives and bodies in the real world. I take great issue with that.

Me:
Nice way of turning it against me when I never actually wrote that those realities don't matter, especially when you're the one who once said, "I don't care about politics, I care about poetry," a totally laughable and ridiculous assertion.

What I meant when I wrote "I have no idea..." was that this is, in essence, a pissing contest between two women who have no connection to anything that has to do with me, the poetry that I write, the poets that I know, or the contemporary poetry that I care about and read.

Dimitrov:
Right, Ted, so because it has nothing to do with you, you don't see why it matters or what this has to do with what "we" do as poets and writers. Why it's a big deal that an African American woman is editing this anthology, why it's a big deal that more poets of colors are included, women, etc. Well, it is a big deal. And it matters. And it matters to some of us that don't identify as those minorities. I would hope it matters to all of us.

Me:
Well, it doesn't.

and then it ended. my old prof from undergrad years wrote me and said, "lol lol you're taking on Dimitrov, be careful! he's small but quick, he can cut a bitch!" and all i said was, "i could lay him on the ground in seconds."

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ujp6431DEJg/TsW__8gjiZI/AAAAAAAAAe8/dJpcjLQi0CY/s1600/Marie%2BHowe%2Band%2BAlex%2BDimitrov.jpg

"He's gonna aim low. Think body. Crouch like a tiger, hide like a dragon!"

everything about him fills me with a rage so intense that i find it difficult to think about him unless his horribleness confronts me.

NIce pants, tho.

I quite liked Vendler's review, tabes, and laughed out loud in the library at the excerpts of Dove's prose.

sounds like you'll bed Dimitrov by the end of the year though.

I haven't followed Vendler for years but her early stewardship of Merrill, Bishop, and O'Hara helped.

'fraid i'm not likely to make another NY FAP appearance 'til springtime