nickelmountain

I can't believe I keep forgetting to do this! Thank you to brynspikess for the lovely shiny v-gift!

I only have one class on Tuesdays, so I wanted to spend today avoiding my homework by recording the fic I chose for chromatic_podfic. That's due March 2nd, and if I wait much longer it'll get crowded out by the 40 page paper that's due later that week. Which I haven't started writing yet. Which totally isn't my fault. Which I actually had to have a meeting about with people at my school, and they agreed it wasn't my fault. SO THERE.

*ahem* Anyway. IN ADDITION to an un-started 40 page paper, a short presentation, and two midterms in the next two weeks, I'm working on my chromatic_podfic, a podfic for crinklysolution for scarleteenfans, and my podficbigbang. In addition to three or four other podfics in various stages of planning and/or completion.

And! Hey! You can still win my podficcing services in support of Planned Parenthood at fandom_helps! Bidding is open until 11:30 EST TONIGHT! And despite the dubious state of affairs described in the last paragraph, I actually have a pretty fast turnaround time on podfics won in charity auctions. Two weeks to a month, usually. (Just, um, not the next two weeks. Probably.)

I also still have a podfic up for auction at fund_jcollins. That auction closes on March 7th.

Also, I talked about The Walking Dead in my last post, and then watched the most recent episode...I really can't endorse that show. It has such an incredible look to it, but the content is pretty fucking misogynistic. And not in an intelligent, meta-textual, commenting-on-human-nature kind of way. It's not that humanity collapses and the survivors revert to base primate behavior...it's just dumb. The amount of time I can forestall disappointment in a bad show is directly proportional to how excited I was about it before it aired, and The Walking Dead finally crossed that line for me. It's been too dumb for too long.

Oh hey, I realized I started a thought like five paragraphs ago and never finished it. I was going to record podfic today. But instead I'm drinking hot tea and Emergen-C and downing cold medicine that makes me do loopy things like get distracted mid-paragraph and wander into a monologue about zombies apropos of completely nothing (as you do)...

I think I'd better get out of this post while I still can. TL;DR: I have a cold. That's all I really meant to say. That, and thank you to brynspikess, whose v gift was a pleasant and welcome surprise last week.

Reading Erikson's "Identity and the Life Cycle" for my Psychology of Lifespan class, I've learned the following:

1) Americans have warmer relationships with their young children than any other culture in the world. That's right, the WHOLE WORLD.

2) African Americans (excuse me, "Negroes") are only sort of American. Same goes, ironically, for Native Americans.

3) Boys are commonly challenged in their attempts to identify with authority figures of their own gender because so many teachers are women.

4) Every young girl struggles with a sense of inferiority when she realizes she lacks a penis. She understands from at least age 4 that her clitoris is not an adequate substitute.

Also, if you, as an adult, tell a little boy that he's "a queer," guess what he'll grow up to be? Just guess.

We're reading this because Erikson is a crucial figure in stage theory. He expanded on Freud's ideas about the stages of childhood development, and introduced the idea that adults also go through stages. Still, I expect a lot of angry ranting about this article in class on Tuesday.

If no one else rants, I sure as fuck will.

Unless, that is, I'm too hung up on the inherent inferiority of my poor, tiny clitoris.

 I finished my first week of grad school.

So far...honestly, I love it. The amount of reading I have to do is insane, and 90% of my classmates are younger than I am, but my instructors are awesome and the material is genuinely interesting.

Just one thing - before I enrolled in a Master's in Clinical Psych program, I didn't spend a lot of time flipping through the DSM. So I naively thought that when homosexuality was taken out of it with the publication of the DSM IV, that meant that the so-called "Gender Identity Disorder" was taken out, too. Sometimes I assume the world to be a better place than it really is. Not often, but enough that sometimes I feel like a real dumbass.

Today in Psychopathology, I was assigned to do a group presentation at the end of the semester about Gender Identity Disorder.

SIgh.

We have to pick a movie relating to the subject, and diagnose the relevant character using the criterion established in the DSM IV-TR. Boys Don't Cry was suggested, but I convinced the group to go with The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, instead. I did not want to attempt to "diagnose" the film version of a real person. Brandon's life was too short, his death was horrific, and I don't want to be the asshole sitting around with two other straight chicks talking about Brandon Teena's "mental disorder." (Also, I really dislike that movie.)

The transgendered character in The Adventures of Sebastian Cole is safely ficticious, and nicely multifaceted. Does not come across as "disordered" at all.

Nickelhusband is grumbling about dinner. Got to go.

Tomorrow: podficcing!