Dental ~ma for Shir and job ~ma for Tom.

How is Lucy doing, Brenda?

I don't know if the link will work, but huge amounts of snow pictures from the parental units, including video of my sister's dog loving the snow fall. (Otter Lake, NY) [link]

Well, yes - I mean, I have more than my share of sexual hangups, so this may be a moment when I realise what I total freak I am, but I'd have that for a lot of girls who are hitting puberty, the idea of sex is threatening/scary/intimidating on a whole host of levels. For one thing, when they're kids, the boys aren't usually that much bigger and stronger than girls.

Power balance - both physical and psychological - is surely a huge thing when it comes to sex? There are actors and fictional characters whose appeal is tied up with their potential for wreaking (sexual) violence. (Certainly if the cover art I keep seeing on SBTB is anything to go by!) And then there are the ones whose attraction is tied up with their vulnerability and breakability and all that jazz.

I get that, but I still don't see how it quite jibes with the "girls attracted to nonthreatening boys" thing.

When you're attracted to someone you want to touch them (I'm using "touch" because when I was 12, 13, 14 I didn't want to fuck the twinks so much as kiss them and sit next to them and marry them). Other girls wanted to touch big jocky boys or that one guy in the eighth grade who'd managed a mustache. Were they more "threatening" because they were more stereotypically macho? Were those girls less hung-up and me more hung-up? Did I eventually "grow up" and get over the arty boys? I don't think so.

I think the whole "nonthreatening" concept has more to do with notions that macho guys are real guys and fem guys aren't. And women who like the latter don't like real guys, they like some watered-down version that won't threaten them.

I remember when Titanic was all that and females of all ages were squeeing over Leonardo diCaprio. I remember SO many guys (radio particularly) saying, "But WHY? He's such a FAG." Really? Because he has sex with women. And aaaaallll these women are finding him more attractive than you.

Job~ma to Tom and dental~ma to Shir.

For those who were wondering, Time Warner Cable customer service still sucks. I'm working from home today, and only online thanks to my kind neighbor's dsl.

Big mountains of -ma to all that need it!

In Things That I Can't Believe news:

This bloke is visiting our school to see if we're ready for the Assessment Process that will get us Accredited with some International Schools body or other. He's been before 2 years ago, and apparently when he came then he was demanding people fetch him warm mango, and get fancy coffee delivered from Starbucks, and all this kind of thing - which struck me as pretty spectacularly advantage-taking, but whatever.

Yesterday he came and observed my lesson, and gave me feedback - he said it was Satisfactory on the whole, with several Good features. (Which, obviously, sounds like "crap!", but I know it doesn't actually mean I'm crap. He made some valid and constructive criticisms, and it's always useful to get someone else's perspective on how you can improve things. He said mostly stuff that I'd thought myself about how it went, so that's all okay, and he also made positive comments about various other things about my teaching and my learning environment.) Right.

Today, my respect for his professionalism has sunk somewhat. Apparently he sent someone in the admin staff across town to go and pick up porn DVDs for him.

Which - frankly, I'm still trying to figure out how I can have misconstrued this information. Maybe it was just regular DVDs? Which is still TOTALLY taking the piss, but isn't as spectacularly inappropriate as sending an employee of the primary school you're assessing to go and pick up porn for you.

The guy's name?

...

...

edited because it strikes me that I'm being distinctly indiscreet, and Google is mighty.

Suffice it to say he's called Dick.

Now - Jesus, it's like something out of a Dickens novel. Well, you know - with more Thai porn. But in terms of names and appropriate behaviour - yeah. Gosh.

Apparently he sent someone in the admin staff across town to go and pick up porn DVDs for him.

are you fucking kidding me? I would report him. I would, however, wait until the day his report was due, and say "I don't want this to affect his report, and I don't want you to think that it's in retaliation, so I'm reporting in this window"

Good luck keeping a straight face around Dick Cheat'em, Fay.

Heh. heh. heh. We said Dick.

I get that, but I still don't see how it quite jibes with the "girls attracted to nonthreatening boys" thing.

I'm probably not thinking about this clearly enough, but I'd have said that "nonthreatening boys" = "boys who you reckon (rightly or wrongly) you could take in a fight", as distinct from "boys who look like they could squish you like a bug".

No?

So with the former, there's less of a scary sense of power imbalance for the hypothetical hormonal teenage girl, in terms of her being able to choose how far she takes things?

I may well be talking out of my ass.

Wow, Fay. What an ass.

Also, I sympathize with brenda's plight, because I have not had time to pull out my winter clothes and it's been colder here the past few days, so I've been struggling with the what to wear question. I really need a day when I'm in a less-than-good mood to go through my closets and do a purge.

Just in case anyone needs a kitten fix: [link] vid. that Harvey was just watching avidly.

Reading this from Fay -

I may well be talking out of my ass.

which was followed by Sparky with -

Wow, Fay. What an ass.

just made me laugh and laugh and laugh. But I definitely agree that Dick Cheatham is a royal prick.