LHF 3.5: "Stirrings of Life"

http://oddpla.net/lhf/?p=97 In which Will can't get no satisfaction, but Velvette and Gemini can!

Comments: Welcome another character to the cast: Gemini! She's not really new, so much as she is newly appearing. Those of you who have very long memories and attention to this sort of detail may recall the story of how Anneka's best friend Pippilotta was turned into a vampire. It was a sordid affair in which she was exploited by one Gemini Beaumont purely to make Gemini's squeeze jealous. Gemini comes from the wild and self-destructive End of the World, a clan based in Provincetown, so her reputation as a dangerous agent of chaos precedes her. She and Velvette seem to get along well, though.

It may be difficult to read, but Janet’s white board has lots of helpful messages on it, like “Order stem cells” and “Kraftwerk rules! <- So does Velvette” and “Remember - Velvette = sister. <- That’s not funny! <- That’s because you have no sense of humor.”

Battleground of Desire: The Struggle for Self-Control in Modern America

As much as I like subject-delimited histories [i.e., about sex and gender roles in the U.S. in the late Victorian Era], I actually prefer thematically based overviews, such as Battleground of Desire, which takes a general subject -- controlling the body/emotions/sexual expression in the Victorian bourgeoisie -- and shows how the concepts of this struggle for self-control distribute themselves through all aspects of daily life. When I read about the many ways in which the fight for self-control could manifest itself -- in diary entries chastising oneself for being too passionate [something Mary does frequently], in the schoolroom punishment to "go sit in the corner and think about the consequences of your actions," to the widespread horror of masturbation, called "self-abuse," to the huge obsession with correct posture, to the intractable debate about restrictive corsets vs. "healthier" clothing with room to breathe-- I get a better sense of what  it might have been like to live  during that period with those things on my mind. While Battleground does not go into lots of detail on any subject, it's a learned synthesis of many individual cultural trends, and it's based on solid research.

"May I please have a cheeseburger.com?"

My 6-year-old stepkidsy enjoys watching us go to icanhascheezburger.com and reading the LOLcats out loud to her. She asks to see "kitty pictures" regularly. While she certainly enjoys pictures of adorable animals doing amusing things, she has yet to grasp the inherent humor of LOLspeak, as evidenced by her hypercorrect name for icanhascheezburger.com: "mayipleasehaveacheeseburger.com." She has requested this much politer and more grammatically correct site several times on the past visits. ^_^ She also tries to make up her own LOLspeak jokes. Sometimes we can hear her trying them out: "O hai is u my kidsy?" Or, "Sleeping cat is sleeping!"

Today's riddances: 6

2 pairs of glasses donated
1 glasses case donated
3 sets of Rements sold
Total 6 riddances
Grand total 80 riddances