This...

I am getting ready to try and fall asleep and full of worry about people I care about and the way things have been lately and I see this on Pinterest and it helps a little...the part about her personality "always getting lost somewhere between her heart and her mouth"...because it reminds me that others have felt this way too.

and also this (boy, can I relate to this!):

She’s in here, I wanted to respond. But she only comes out when I’m writing. You thought you were hiring Writing Me. But instead what you got was Actual Me. Big mistake.

 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/writing-my-way-to-a-new-self/?ref=opinion&_r=0

If Billie Holiday soothes my sadness, David Bowie helps me channel my outrage. He's just who I need to hear when I'm frustrated or angry with things I can't control...or even with myself. I'm not only upset with the news, I'm upset with myself and the mistakes I seem to keep making in my personal life. Somehow, David Bowie helps.

 

I'm wishing I had gotten my hands on the UK 3-cd set of Nothing Has Changed, but until I can track that down I'm listening to the standard one found more commonly in stores, online and even the library, where I checked out mine.

 

Most of the time, there is music for every mood...most of the time. Right now, this fits perfectly. I've only been following David Bowie since his Let's Dance days, but over the years I've visited his early days and, in his very long and illustrious career, there are very few albums of his I don't like.

 

This review appears, un-credited, on the allmusic website. It doesn't mention "Thursday's Child," which is completely "new" to me and something I really like. Apparently, Bowie named the song after Eartha Kitt's autobiography, a book he loved when was 14.

 

Nothing Has Changed is a bit of a cheeky title for a career retrospective from an artist who is known as a chameleon, and this triple-disc compilation has other tricks up its sleeve. Chief among these is sequencing the SuperDeluxe 59-track set in reverse chronological order, so it opens with the brand-new, jazz-inflected "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and concludes with David Bowie's debut single, "Liza Jane." On paper, this seems a bit like a stunt, but in actuality it's a sly way to revisit and recontextualize a career that has been compiled many, many times before. Previously, there have been single discs, double discs, and triple-disc boxes, but the largest of these was Sound + Vision, a box released in 1989, and the most recent was 2002's The Best of Bowie, which featured slightly different track listings in different territories but generally stopped in the late '90s. The two-CD version of Nothing Has Changed resembles this 2002 set -- there are absences, notably "John, I'm Only Dancing," "Diamond Dogs," and "TVC15," but they're not noticed among the parade of standards -- but it's easily overshadowed by the triple-disc SuperDeluxe set. This version of Nothing Has Changed touches upon nearly every phrase of Bowie's career, bypassing Tin Machine but finding space for early pre-"Space Oddity" singles that often don't make Bowie's comps, and naturally it samples from his fine Y2K records, plus his 2013 comeback The Next Day. This expansiveness alone would be noteworthy, but when it's combined with the reverse sequencing the compilation forces listeners to reconsider an artist whose legacy seemed so set in stone it appropriately was enshrined in museums. Obvious high-water marks are undersold -- there's not as much Ziggy as usual, nor as much Berlin -- so other eras can also enter the canon, whether it's the assured maturity of the new millennium or the appealing juvenilia of the '60s. The end result is something unexpected: a compilation that makes us hear an artist we know well in a whole new way.

 

 

 

Almost every day there is an article on Yahoo about radical Christians or the far (far) right wanting to push their views on other people by punishing them legally. Some of these views include very extreme measures such as killing gay people and making sure women "know their place" or don't have easily available and safe access to reproductive health care, even if their lives are at stake.

I don't know if people like Ted Cruz or (to an even larger extreme) men like the lawyer in California who wants to make it legal to kill gay people have a chance in pushing their power further. I don't even want to think about a world like that, I would sooner die first than live there.

Yet there are lots of people who would gladly follow people like Cruz and even Matthew Gregory McLaughlin (the lawyer who is proposing a bill that would advocate the murder of gays and lesbians) and this scares me so much I can barely type this.

As I often wonder sometimes, both as a lesbian and a woman, how do people like this dare to think they speak for God or humanity? I would think even the most hardened homophobic would agree killing people is wrong.

I am constantly amazed that there is mentality we live in a gay friendly country when you can still be fired in 29 states for being gay and many of us struggle for any kind of relationship with our families simply because they cannot accept who we are...

This McLaughlin guy apparently can go ahead with this initiative so that if it gets enough signatures (365,000 according to news reports) it can be on the ballot in November. The scary thing is I think there are actually those who would willingly sign it (and not just through some kind of deception on the part of the people asking for signatures.) This upsets me so much that I can't begin to describe my feelings.

two recent reads...

 

Off Screen is just a bit short for my tastes, but I love the writing, how sweet the story is and how both lead characters take their time getting to know each other. Becoming friends first, but secretly hoping for more, each woman is adorably endearing in her uncertainty about how the other feels.

Other pluses for me include: a vulnerability and earnestness found both in the writing itself and both women. I love the author's observations on so many things, but especially how writing can heal and the fears of falling in love (and not being loved back.)

What it lacks in length, Off Screen makes up for in substance. Well under one hundred pages, this novella sets things up nicely for what I hope will be a super sequel (see: The Red Carpet).

This is absolutely, positively the sweetest and most adorable tale I've read in quite a while. I'm still smiling from how nice and sincere it is. More lesfic should aspire to be have old-fashioned romance and wonderfully quirky characters who deeply care about each other. I would have paid twice what I did for such a charming read! :)

I sat down to watch "new" tv for the first time in days and soon found myself remembering why I prefer old movies and my "I Love Lucy" dvds.

First, I checked out the latest CSI incarnation, "Cyber."  Then, when I could take no more of the overly slick production values and monotonous vibes (is this the same Patricia Arquette who just won an Academy Award?) of the show I tried to catch up on "Castle."

There, I was troubled by the opening line. An astronaut in training exclaims how badly he wants a "hot girl in a bikini." Even a "ugly one" would do as long as she came with a "paper bag."

Way beyond irritated by then, I turned that off and switched to a "Mike & Molly" rerun, where not ten minutes into it, the running gag is how many quips they can get out of three men being "grossed out" over a topless, much older woman accidentally walking in on them.

This is way much sexism for me in one day so now I'm trying to escape with the Sunday papers, which by nature of its sharing the news of the world is also disturbing.

I know that the word "ugly" bothers me beyond my having a righteous indignation for women everywhere. I heard my share of the world "ugly" enough in middle and high school and it stuck with me for so long that it still hurts when I hear that world used anywhere, about anyone.
 
But personal bias aside, I know there is a sexism problem on tv and that's one main reason I prefer reruns and classics.

Chuck Lorre (who created "Mike & Molly") knocking women over for good laughs should not surprise me, but the "Castle" thing really does. It struck a nerve with me that I should get past, but right now I just can't. Yes, there is sexism in old movies and "I Love Lucy" but it's not as vulgar as today's and it's not as shocking.

I would rather be insulted with a little class and style, two things mostly missing in today's entertainment. Katherine Hepburn may be a bit daft in "Bringing Up Baby" and Lucy may cry to get her way and Ricky may sometimes patronize her, but there wasn't this crudeness, this complete lack of respect for women as people that (to me) seems worse today than ever.

The more vulgar the world gets the more I just want to escape. "Bringing Up Baby" and "I Love Lucy" will never be considered feminist works of art, but they are fun and from a world that didn't pretend to be as enlightened as today's world tries to pretend it is.