Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

The panel on "Rethinking Disabling Metaphor," on the ways that casual use of terms like "lame" or "crazy" as all-purpose dismissals of people and ideas can both be painful to some people who hear them, and create or reinforce prejudices, was good. The moderators had to remind a few people of the focus of _this_ panel, that similar uses of, say, "that's gay," were beyond the scope of what they were trying to do in 75 minutes. But some good ideas were shared; one useful thing the moderators did was point out that you can't just tell people not to use idioms or metaphors, you need to provide and use different ones. So they collected a few from other categories: for example, that an idea is half-baked or doesn't hold water.

elisem summed a lot of this up as "before you insult someone, think of the collateral damage."

The panel I moderated, on Tyrannosaurs and F-14s, went pretty well, I think, despite one person in the front row who kept jumping in without waiting to be called, to the point that I cut him off in turn, saying "we've heard from you a lot, $name. Anyone else?" (I have already forgotten his name, not having noted it in time to save for "people I do not want to be on panels with.") One of my panelists noted afterward that the audience kept laughing, which was a good sign. We threw in lots of "I liked this even though it was bad," and Cabell suggested that one reason we were all coming up with movies and TV shows rather than books is that there are several people involved in creating those, and more ways that some parts of it can be good: the script stinks, but the cinematography is gorgeous or one of the actors really appeals to you. Someone in the audience added that a movie, for him, is a two-hour time investment, and a novel is eight or ten, so he's going to have higher standards before sticking with a novel. Also, stuff that you hit at the right time: for different people, Lost in Space, and Highlander. So does context: part of what Cabell had enjoyed about Highlander was watching it with her roommate annd mocking it together. That's less likely/common with written fiction.

After that, I went to the Haiku Earring party, let erik serve me herb tea, had some nice round brownies, and eventually picked out a pair of earrings that I figured I could write something from, though I didn't want to keep them. So:

Patchwork Magic

Magic holds the world
together, after children
tear summer's thread.


I'm not 100% happy with it, but will probably just let it sit. (I took a photo with my cell phone before putting the earrings back; once home, I may see about getting that from there to Flickr.)

And so to bed, and a decent night's sleep this time.

[Lunch with oursin, dinner with Matt, Janet, their daughter, and pennski and her husband Chris. I've been in and out of Michelangelo's for tea often enough, close enough together, to have gotten into smiles and "hello again" with at least one of the counter staff.]

ETA: Elise has posted photos of the earrings; I'm fairly sure these are the ones I was working with.

There's a new trainer at the gym, who I think I dislike. I was minding my own business on the exercise bike, doing my warmup (well, a little past the usual amount of time for weeknight warmups), and heard a voice say "Fight it!" And then he asked me how long I was planning on doing; I told him about another 30 seconds, finished same, and went to the Xpressline machines. While I was waiting my turn there, he came over again, commented on how fast I'd found my card, insisted that the trainer who was setting things up wasn't named Omar but [name of some basketball player] and, when I finally convinced him that I don't fight the equipment because it's not my enemy, it's a tool, tried to tell me that it was my best friend.

It's machinery. Machinery without any kind of brain. It's useful. Tools are how we made ourselves, they're a very good thing. But it's a tool, not my best friend (my best friend wasn't even in the building).

Once I got settled in, all went well: I had to say "hey, check the settings" twice (once on amount of weight, once on seat height), but I did the twelve reps that are the maximum they recommend on the Xpressline, on all the machines. Same weights as last time, but I may increase some of them on Monday. And decrease one: my left triceps was feeling a bit tender, so Omar recommended using a lower weight next time (which I hope will be Saturday). Then I went and did crunches, back arches, and the yoga "tree" balance exercise, and finished off by stretching. Elliott, my favorite of their current staff, stopped by to say hello while I was stretching; we chatted a minute, including about my having been away from the gym for a bit, and my comment that I'd taken a break because I wasn't feeling well physically, and come back because I needed the stress relief as well as because I was feeling better.