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calimac, who reviews classical music, wrote about going to the second performance of a concert that was panned two nights earlier, an audience member who asked the pre-concert lecturer what she'd thought of that bad review, and the role of reviewers:
Reviewers need to be honest, yes.
Whether performers, writers, or other artists benefit from reading reviews is a separate question: even where there's criticism the artist could use to improve future performances/works ("don't perform when you're coming down with the flu" may not be, depending on previous commitments), I gather that at least some people react strongly enough to published criticism that they're best off reading neither praise nor pans.
Regardless, I really can't see anything to be gained by asking a performer right before she performs a particular program what she thought of a bad review two nights earlier. Almost any answer opens the performer to attack--she's oversensitive, she's defensive, she's arrogant, she doesn't care about the audience. So she might as well quote Sinatra. Reviewers may not be shooting the wounded, because they're not worth anything unless they're honest (though some may lean too far to the negative, as others to the positive), but someone who reads that review, chooses to attend the concert anyway, and then asks the pre-concert lecturer about it is rubbing salt in the wound.
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bisexual is in a monogamous heterosexual relationship, with a husband who is pressuring her to come out (to everyone, apparently), and asked (in a locked post) what the reasons are for doing so, and for some "non-accusatory insight" into the situation. I wrote:
I'm out because (a) I'm not good at keeping secrets, (b) I do have partners of both sexes, and (c) everyone who comes out makes it easier for the rest of us. The second apparently doesn't apply to you, and I don't know whether the first does. The third you've already decided isn't sufficient motivation for you.
If you think your parents may find out some other way, it makes sense to tell them first so you can have some control over the conversation, and in particular over when and where you have it: someplace congenial, not surrounded by screaming children or judgmental acquaintances. (Your parents may or may not be judgmental; you know them and I don't.)
It might be worth asking your husband what he expects to gain from you coming out, and what he expects you to gain. (Not an abstract "you're living a lie," what specific good effects he thinks it will have.) If he's unhappy with you living the privileged heterosexual life, tell him to come out as bi to his parents--because he's benefiting from that same privilege. No, for these purposes it doesn't matter whether he's bi. Actual heterosexuals have exactly as much unearned privilege as people passing as het do, and if he starts telling parents, friends, and coworkers that he's bi, they're not likely to think he's lying to them.
In a locked post,hobbitbabe asked for a term for how accurate one's visualization of one's own body is, given that "good body image" generally means liking one's body and/or appearance:
I'm not sure of terminology. I had a bit of a discussion about the subject (not the terminology) withbadger2305, not on LJ; if I can find my piece and it makes sense without his, I'll either post it here or send it to you.
The term "proprioception" comes to mind, but that's not actually about what you look like and the different aspects of that--what you see directly (e.g., my typing fingers, though I've been taught not to look there), what you see in the mirror, what you think of yourself as looking like (which might be built in part on memory and other people's comments), what other people see (which is also not guaranteed to be accurate), or what turns up in a camera (ditto, though we sometimes believe "the camera never lies", ignoring everything from the limits of the technology to the choice of where to point, when to actually take the picture, and which pictures to keep and show people).
Right. Proprioception: the internal model of one's body and where it is in space. It's not about whether my hand is beautiful, or even about knowing whether the cat scratched me again, but about knowing where my hand is; if mine were better I'd not bump into walls and furniture so much.
Nattering about chai, in response tohobbitbabe:
What I think of as default chai tea is black tea with spices and hot milk; traditionally the milk, or a milk-and-water mix, is heated and then the tea leaves and spices steep in the simmering milk.
Something similar is called "chai tea latte" in coffee shops; this may be to distinguish it from spiced tea, sold at the same price as their other plain teas. (Starbucks carries Tazo teas, including a "chai spice" that I rather like with milk.)
I rarely buy the chai at coffee places in North America, because it's almost always a pre-sweetened blend that is too sweet for my taste (chai should be sweet, in my opinion, but the sugar shouldn't overwhelm the tea flavor).
Good chai can be had, in some places. I have fond memories of a cup of chai I got in Cambridge a few years ago, while wandering around a summer festival withbohemiancoast and family; I got it from some cheerful latter-day hippie types, who had a pleasant awning to provide shade, and nice big ceramic mugs. The Afghan restaurant I go to once in a while sells a Persian variant called shir-chay, which also contains rose petals.
In a comment thread,aynathie mentioned honeysuckle and then noted that the Italian word is "caprifoglio">:
"Caprifoglio": that's lovely. The English and Italian names are for completely different attributes, and both right (carrying extra imagery, in the way that so many flower names don't: a rose or daisy is just itself, and "dahlia" honors someone, but not someone most of us know anything about).
james_nicoll was talking about a contest Baen Books is running, and in a discussion of plausible (at least plausible enough for stfnal scenarios) futures, wizwom wrote "Actually, I see nothing remotely like a plausible scenario for the destruction of the United States of America."
My reply was
Sure, but do you think a literate Roman in 800 AUC would have seen a plausible scenario for the destruction of their empire?
calimac, who reviews classical music, wrote about going to the second performance of a concert that was panned two nights earlier, an audience member who asked the pre-concert lecturer what she'd thought of that bad review, and the role of reviewers:Reviewers need to be honest, yes.
Whether performers, writers, or other artists benefit from reading reviews is a separate question: even where there's criticism the artist could use to improve future performances/works ("don't perform when you're coming down with the flu" may not be, depending on previous commitments), I gather that at least some people react strongly enough to published criticism that they're best off reading neither praise nor pans.
Regardless, I really can't see anything to be gained by asking a performer right before she performs a particular program what she thought of a bad review two nights earlier. Almost any answer opens the performer to attack--she's oversensitive, she's defensive, she's arrogant, she doesn't care about the audience. So she might as well quote Sinatra. Reviewers may not be shooting the wounded, because they're not worth anything unless they're honest (though some may lean too far to the negative, as others to the positive), but someone who reads that review, chooses to attend the concert anyway, and then asks the pre-concert lecturer about it is rubbing salt in the wound.
Someone on
bisexual is in a monogamous heterosexual relationship, with a husband who is pressuring her to come out (to everyone, apparently), and asked (in a locked post) what the reasons are for doing so, and for some "non-accusatory insight" into the situation. I wrote:I'm out because (a) I'm not good at keeping secrets, (b) I do have partners of both sexes, and (c) everyone who comes out makes it easier for the rest of us. The second apparently doesn't apply to you, and I don't know whether the first does. The third you've already decided isn't sufficient motivation for you.
If you think your parents may find out some other way, it makes sense to tell them first so you can have some control over the conversation, and in particular over when and where you have it: someplace congenial, not surrounded by screaming children or judgmental acquaintances. (Your parents may or may not be judgmental; you know them and I don't.)
It might be worth asking your husband what he expects to gain from you coming out, and what he expects you to gain. (Not an abstract "you're living a lie," what specific good effects he thinks it will have.) If he's unhappy with you living the privileged heterosexual life, tell him to come out as bi to his parents--because he's benefiting from that same privilege. No, for these purposes it doesn't matter whether he's bi. Actual heterosexuals have exactly as much unearned privilege as people passing as het do, and if he starts telling parents, friends, and coworkers that he's bi, they're not likely to think he's lying to them.
In a locked post,
hobbitbabe asked for a term for how accurate one's visualization of one's own body is, given that "good body image" generally means liking one's body and/or appearance:I'm not sure of terminology. I had a bit of a discussion about the subject (not the terminology) with
badger2305, not on LJ; if I can find my piece and it makes sense without his, I'll either post it here or send it to you.The term "proprioception" comes to mind, but that's not actually about what you look like and the different aspects of that--what you see directly (e.g., my typing fingers, though I've been taught not to look there), what you see in the mirror, what you think of yourself as looking like (which might be built in part on memory and other people's comments), what other people see (which is also not guaranteed to be accurate), or what turns up in a camera (ditto, though we sometimes believe "the camera never lies", ignoring everything from the limits of the technology to the choice of where to point, when to actually take the picture, and which pictures to keep and show people).
Right. Proprioception: the internal model of one's body and where it is in space. It's not about whether my hand is beautiful, or even about knowing whether the cat scratched me again, but about knowing where my hand is; if mine were better I'd not bump into walls and furniture so much.
Nattering about chai, in response to
hobbitbabe:What I think of as default chai tea is black tea with spices and hot milk; traditionally the milk, or a milk-and-water mix, is heated and then the tea leaves and spices steep in the simmering milk.
Something similar is called "chai tea latte" in coffee shops; this may be to distinguish it from spiced tea, sold at the same price as their other plain teas. (Starbucks carries Tazo teas, including a "chai spice" that I rather like with milk.)
I rarely buy the chai at coffee places in North America, because it's almost always a pre-sweetened blend that is too sweet for my taste (chai should be sweet, in my opinion, but the sugar shouldn't overwhelm the tea flavor).
Good chai can be had, in some places. I have fond memories of a cup of chai I got in Cambridge a few years ago, while wandering around a summer festival with
bohemiancoast and family; I got it from some cheerful latter-day hippie types, who had a pleasant awning to provide shade, and nice big ceramic mugs. The Afghan restaurant I go to once in a while sells a Persian variant called shir-chay, which also contains rose petals.In a comment thread,
aynathie mentioned honeysuckle and then noted that the Italian word is "caprifoglio">:"Caprifoglio": that's lovely. The English and Italian names are for completely different attributes, and both right (carrying extra imagery, in the way that so many flower names don't: a rose or daisy is just itself, and "dahlia" honors someone, but not someone most of us know anything about).
james_nicoll was talking about a contest Baen Books is running, and in a discussion of plausible (at least plausible enough for stfnal scenarios) futures, wizwom wrote "Actually, I see nothing remotely like a plausible scenario for the destruction of the United States of America."My reply was
Sure, but do you think a literate Roman in 800 AUC would have seen a plausible scenario for the destruction of their empire?
Thousands of years is a long time. It's not that I'm sure there won't be a nation-state called the United States in 4000 CE, it's that I'm far from sure there will be, let alone that it will be meaningfully the same entity. (Consider China of the Warring States period as compared with the People's Republic of China.) There might be a political entity that has existed continuously for 2000 years ("thousands," to my idiomatic ear, means longer than that, but I'll be generous and grant the minimal literal meaning of the term), but the closest I can come is to grant an extremely generous definition of China as a political entity, or stretch the point and give Rome both its mythical founding date and continuity to 1453 CE.
In fact, it seems plausible that there might be, two or three milennia from now, a group calling itself the United States and even flying a stars-and-stripes flag, but with an unrelated government and no territory in North America, possibly none on Earth at all.