Awesomesauce on the Internet: February 25th

I've concluded that I want to dedicate a day a week to links. I've seen a bunch of other blogs do it -- and I am nothing but a filthy copycat. Also, it gives me a chance to pimp the way-too-many blogs I follow in Google Reader. (Trust me. It's too much.) Since this is a new thing, it's going to take some some adjusting. This week is light, since I decided this yesterday. I don't even know how I feel yet.

This Week at the Cafe.

The writer's group here in Lawrence started a blog at the beginning of the year called The Confabulator Cafe, which is delightfully fun and tackles a different writing-related topic each week. This week we discussed how we tackle character development. It's interesting to see how a group of fiction writers all look at developing characters differently. Angela admits she has some trouble with villains. Rachel doesn't do character sheets but Sara does. Larry hates his characters, and Jason discusses people watching. And man, that's not even most of the posts. Have at it!

Okay, yes, I also wrote a post about how I'm just sort of stumbling around and will figure out the character more while editing.

Random Posts

How To Create a Notebook Design with CSS from CSS Tricks. It's a tutorial from a 14-year-old developer on how to create -- as the title suggests -- a block that looks like notebook paper. It's pretty slick. I may use it at some point.

Make your own homemade dishwasher detergent & How buying heirloom seeds defends our habitat from invasion from Offbeat Home. I find a lot of Offbeat Empire posts really interesting, and these two stuck out yesterday. Making homemade dishwater detergent sounds really cool, and I just know nothing about heirloom seeds. Both posts appeal to my dirty hippie side.

Music

Sometimes I just want to update the blog with YouTube videos of music -- there's a reason I have the egotistical tag "Ashley has awesome take in music." So, you know, I may as well do that now! Two songs today.

Wax Audio: Stayin' Alive in the Wall
Ever since I learned the phrase "mash up" from Glee (don't judge me, I hate myself enough) I've loved the concept. Love! Some of these mash ups offend family and friends -- Tik Tok Together is well-hated by Andy's boyfriend best friend, and every time it plays in the car he swears he's going to jump out. But this one is golden. As it Tik Tok Together, I don't even care.

Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know
You've probably already heard this; it plays on our localish alt-rock station occasionally. I may have even already linked it, I don't know. I heard it once and loved the sound of it; I like the mellow mournful thing, like "I'm sad, but it's really a lot of fucking effort to get really upset about it." Opinion of the people in the car with me varies. (I do most my obnoxious music listening in the car. Seriously. I become a monstrous bitch the second we're on a road trip. If Andy and I ever divorce, the papers are going to say "Got into a fist fight over the MP3 player in the car.")

But more than the absolutely amazing sound, I actually think this is the most perfect story song I've heard in a long time. In a little over four minutes we're given all the story of a relationship we'll ever need. We don't know how long these two were together, but we know that he thinks they had that puppy love, deliriously happy phase -- and they undoubtedly did, when they first got together (Like when you said you felt so happy you could die, which honestly, says something a little strange about these people). We know that he is one of those people who can't abide a good thing, and is possibly that guy who self-sabotages relationships (You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness / Like resignation to the end, always the end.). He launches into this chorus about how after they break up she makes a break for it, gets her friends to get her things, and changes her number. That's some abnormal break-up nonsense. What the hell.

Except her verse talks about a very different relationship, at least by the end. In two lines, she undermines pretty much everything he says, all blame heaped on her by the chorus: Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over / But had me believing it was always something that I'd done.. Suddenly you have to look at everything he's said in a different light, especially the chorus. Was this an abusive relationship, or just a broken one?

Ladies and gentlemen, this song has unreliable narrators! Oh man, unreliable narrators are the best, and seriously: how often to we think about having an unreliable narrator in a song. I have a hard time expressing my feelings on this. It's just such a good song, and it's such a compelling story, and I cannot stop listening to it. I think Andy might be sick of it.

Feminism, Technology, and Chance Encounters with Men's Rights Activism

I decided that I wanted to look up blogs related to feminism and technology, as I'm interested in both of these things. With the prospect of finding more varied work as a writer, I wanted some inspiration. I wanted to be reminded that I am great and in fantastic technological company. I was looking for  something like The Ada Initiative, which describes itself perfectly:

The Ada Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media.

Hells to the yes. So I hop over to The Google and get my search on. What I encounter is first a website called Feminist Approach to Technology, which is great but isn't really a blog and is a group based in India -- I'm not sure I can identify with it culturally. And then I came across a website called "Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology." I sort of eyeball it -- is it saying that technology is inherently anti-feminist? So I click.

Adventures in Standing Desks & Dumpster Diving

It's become obvious in the last couple weeks that working on my couch is no good for my body. It doesn't matter if I'm hunched over my laptop or sitting back with relatively good posture -- when I stand up I feel about 20 years older than I actually am. The bulk of the problem is that I sit cross-legged to support my laptop, and I'll sit like this for an hour before I get up to do something.

It's no good. We have a desk for my husband's computer, and occasionally I'll use it while he's at work or otherwise occupied, but overall the corner of the couch is my desk. Last summer I first heard of a standing desk in the form of a tutorial on Offbeat Home and was intrigued by the concept. We had just moved and our bookshelves weren't yet filled, so I gave it a shot. I didn't have it, but the bookshelf is in the corner (depressing!) and we really need the space; we'd already ditched a broken bookshelf in the move and I couldn't remove two shelves from the little space we had. I've experimented with it here and there, without much luck. My netbook does not lend itself the proper alignment when standing.

The topic came up again when someone on a freelancing forum I follow brought up that he was blogging his experiments. So I ran with it. I was creaking, my least favorite pants no longer fit my fat ass, here was the forum post -- sign from the universe to try this out for real. This was last Thursday. More TL;DR, if you're in the mood for an adventure of exhausting proportions. If you want the short version: it's been a couple days, and for the most part I'm digging it. I find I move a lot while standing. You can skip the rest without missing anything.

Who Needs Classic Beauty When We Have Photoshop?

I love classic nudes. I do! I love to look at classic nudes and see women. Sometimes disproportionate and anatomically dubious women, but still recognizable with the curves and changes that occur in most adult women. Particularly as a fat woman, I like that once upon a time a woman didn't need to be all hard lines and planes in order to be deemed beautiful and picturesque. And that doesn't mean they had to be fat either. They were simply natural.

from Wikipedia
Venus Anadyomene by Titian

That image is seriously beautiful. If I looked like that, I think I would be pretty pleased what I had going on under my t-shirt. However, artist, model, and actress Anna Utopia Giordano concluded that she could do it one better by taking photoshop to classic nudes and skinny them up. The quote that made me go from RAGE QUIT to RAGE BLOG was:

'Art is always in search of the perfect physical form,' Giordano says on her website. 'It has evolved through history, from the classical proportions of ancient Greece to the prosperous beauty of the Renaissance, to the spindly look of models like Twiggy and the athletic look of our own time.'

You can see more of these in the Daily News link above, but to give you an idea of the "athletic" aesthetic that Giordano is implying as the more "perfect physical form" she's given to these classic nudes:

Why I Took Pictures While Breastfeeding My Son

I always wanted to have an actual, professional portrait of my son nursing, in the same way that I wish I hadn't let my body issues stop me from getting some form of maternity photography done. But at least I have those pictures we took at home. Pictures like these:

 

I know; super disgusting and inappropriate. I know this, because when I made the mistake of reading the comments on an HLN article regarding the Facebook Nurse-In, I came across a lot of comments like this:

what they FAIL to realize is that when they post pictures of their babies suckling, that is EXHIBITIONISM. Sorry but why oh why would you even take a picture of yourself breasfeeding? I understand that it is a natural thing, that's one thing, but to complain that FB is taking your pictures of you being an EXHIBITIONIST? Wow you have some warped logic if you are upset about that. If you are going to breastfeed your child, then have some decency about it and cover the child up - to do it in the middle of a store is just the same as posting pictures of yourself online breasfeeding - its indcent exposure in the eyes of most - I don't want to see your boobs.

I would punch this guy square in the dick if we were talking in person. Okay, I wouldn't. I'm not violent. But I would be super pissed off, because apparently he feels like he can identify a sexual desire based on pictures of a child breastfeeding, and that suckling is somehow indecent. I wonder if he would feel more comfortable if we set babies up at a distance as shot milk into their mouths -- then we wouldn't have to subject poor babies to dirty dirty nipples.