Weird times last night

Last night (er, that is to say, Tuesday night-- I spent most of Wednesday night sleeping, and after I post this I'm going back to bed) we met up with Dusty at Derek & Melissa's place to watch movies. Ended up showing them The Return of Captain Invincible, which was still funny on second viewing and thankfully seems to have entertained all parties admirably! So that was fun.

Afterwards, Danny wanted to get dessert, so we swung by IHOP with Dusty to have something sweet and just chat together about video games and D&D. (Derek and Danny had been discussing their concerns about 5E, so it was on his mind, haha). The dessert experience was fun and involved talking about RPGs so I was having a good time, but it was also VERY WEIRD because there was this family sitting at a table a few feet from us being really bizarre the whole time. About thirty seconds after we sat down, one of the older sons (or possibly the father? it was a large group, all dressed in pressed white shirts and black pants) and the youngest son threw up their arms and started making pseudo-musical noise. This involved kinda-sorta-humming, kinda-sorta-buzzing, and clanking their silverware on the table after a few minutes. It was so loud I had trouble hearing Danny and Dustin, let alone focusing on what they were saying. It wasn't musical, either, which was the weirdest part. They weren't singing, but they were occasionally muttering phrases in between the humming and buzzing. Very weird and kind of distracting!

Workouts have been getting pretty difficult to do lately. The heat unfortunately has a really strong effect on me, maybe because I'm not very used to it anymore (I don't have to ride the bus or anything, so I avoid being outdoors in the summer for the most part), so I keep having to stop so I don't pass out. It's really frustrating because I feel like I'm being kind of a wuss, but I also know that passing out would be much, much worse than pacing myself and being careful. Blargh! I don't really know what I can do to get less heat-sensitive.

Edit: I stayed up to follow a link to student animations from CalArt that Kate Beaton had posted. When I see student animation projects I generally feel the following things:

-Holy shit, if these guys are successful, hand animation is going to get so much more gorgeous than it already is!
-Holy shit, if these guys are successful EVERY CARTOON that ever comes out again is going to make me cry myself to sleep in sorrow.

Seriously, the number of student films that are about missing a loved one or losing something precious equivalent to losing a loved one seems to be very high, and I'm a sucker for it every time. I just spent the last fifteen minutes bawling pitifully over a cartoon about a girl whose father died while he was trying to call her. Never mind how cheap it is to use the 'wouldn't it be sad to try to call someone as you were dying and not be able to get a hold of them?' trope, you jerks.

Great cartoons, but now I'm incredibly sad.

Potentially good news soon; also, I really like this guy

I've seen some of this guy's videos before, and I like him. This one in particular struck me as funny while also being pretty accurate:

I also watched this pretty awesome video about the importance of women standing up for and accepting things that people want us to be ashamed of instead (such as having abortions, or being willing to support those who have; I think this could easily be extended to apply to things like being sexually active, which women are also told to be ashamed of by society-- which is also bullshit.) Sound quality on this second one is a little light, so I had to turn the volume up a bit to hear it; it's long at 15minutes, but it's both a good speech and a good example of how to properly use powerpoint if you're going to insist on using powerpoint.

Edit: Also, reading this article describing what rape culture is in relation to gaming, came across this paragraph:

"But – and I cannot state this emphatically enough – rape is not the sole expression of rape culture. The whole point of the term is that abuse of women doesn’t happen in a vacuum: other sexist, toxic social conditions have to be present first, and so long as these conditions remain unaltered, the abuse itself will continue. The fact that gaming exists largely outside physical spaces isn’t a get out of jail free card; it just means that in the case of digital expressions of rape culture, we have to get ourselves out of the mindset that rape is the only consequence that matters – or, worse still, that unless rape happens, the accusation of rape culture is somehow bunk. Culture is what informs our actions; it is not the actions themselves – which means that rape culture is perhaps best understood as the presence of an ongoing sexual threat. If someone wielding a gun threatens to shoot me unless I comply with their orders, I’m supremely unlikely to challenge them: they don’t have to shoot me in order to change my behaviour. In that sense, it doesn’t matter if they really planned to shoot me, or if the gun was even loaded. The point – the effect – is power and coercion, and only someone who was completely callous, stupid, oblivious or a combination of all three would argue that the threat of being shot – and the subsequent change to my behaviour – was meaningless unless I actually was shot. Similarly, if I’m threatened with rape and violence and silenced with gendered, sexualised slurs every time I disagree with male gamers on the internet, it doesn’t matter if they really plan to rape me, or if they’re even capable of doing so: as with the gun, the point – the effect – is power and coercion, and the logic which underlies their choice of threat. What they want is to shut me up by reminding me that rape happens, that it could and should happen to me because of what I’ve said. And when that is your go-to means of silencing women in a context where men are the majority, where the female form is routinely shown in attitudes of hypersexualisation, sexualised violence and submission, and where men are in majority control of that setting? That is rape culture."

Edit Edit: This is a conversation amongst the editors of a webmagazine about the street harassment that they regularly experience.

There aren't really trains here, but I rode the bus constantly, and had to put up with men asking my number, trying to get me to discuss whether I had a boyfriend or would date them, trying to convince me it was worth cheating on my imaginary boyfriend* to sleep with them, asking if I'd been into modeling, and one special individual who declared that he wanted to be married to me until the stop where he was getting off the bus. I made a point of sleeping on the bus as often as possible to avoid harassment, and would go to stops where there was either a group of people already assembled (usually female and male alike) or where I could wait alone to avoid being harassed. Men who found me alone at bus stops varied from one instance when I was 11 where a guy grabbed my hand, petted it, and asked if I'd like to come be his special friend, to an instance when I was just about to graduate college when a man kept edging closer to me and going on at length about the values of dating a chubby woman, who has more hip to grab when you're fucking her, all while openly eyeing my breasts and making it clear that when he said 'chubby' he meant me.

When I walked to school as a kid, men would catcall and honk at me. I developed a strategy of glaring icily and walking with my head up and obviously aggressive body posture to make it clear that nobody had better fuck with me. I am taller than most women, so I think it worked in the sense that nobody ever pulled over to grab me, and pedestrians would, after still giving me passing jabs of comments about how they'd like to do me, not follow or try to physically attack me.

I don't even think of this as street harassment because it made me so angry, but that's exactly what it is and was. It's why I make a point of never going for a walk alone unless I absolutely have to.

Ugh.

* - I was, obviously, not dating anyone, but I would tell people that I was happily involved with a boy or a girl if they were not respecting my space. It's also worth noting that women are a huge part of harassment as well. I was harassed on the bus by women who didn't appreciate me sleeping on the bus and would loudly proclaim that I must be a sex-worker (you know, a prostitute) if I was tired in the middle of the day, and so on and so forth.

It's my hobby, I'll kickstart if I want to

Sun Boxes in Vermont parks. I hope this one makes it-- it's a modest goal, but seems pretty small. Still, I love this sort of thing. Experimental music is cool!

And in the realm of LGBTQ projects, I also backed Project Dad.

I am still mopey about the cartoon about the girl losing her father last night so perhaps more susceptible. As for my own dad, we have plans for a hangout with him and mom on Sunday. (Well, I do; I assume Danny won't mind coming along.)