Categotry Archives: silly blather

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Love and Rockets (Are Two Things That Crash)

Categories: all about me, intellectualisimus, silly blather

Right, ducks, so when last we left off, which was–Christ on a pontoon, over a month ago–your correspondent, C.L. Minou, was in love! Or like! Or crush! Something!

Well, anyway. Hey, guess what! It worked out. Kinda. Sorta. For a bit. Okay, a couple of good weekends. But it turns out that she–

What? Yes, ducks, are there questions? It’s true, I date girls now. Girls are cool.

Continue reading →

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All I Ever Needed to Know* I Learned From "Sex in the City"

Categories: it...came...from...TUMBLR, silly blather

* for the set {being a woman, being a writer, living in New York, things that are totally inaccurate}

  1. It is possible to rent a large one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side as a writer whose only paid gig is a column for a newspaper that is a) free b) more annoying than the free morning paper they hand out in subway stations and c) couldn’t beat the Village Voice’s circulation even when you had to pay for the Voice.
  2. In addition, you will be able to afford a closet full of designer dresses and shoes.
  3. And also only take cabs to places, because real New Yorkers don’t ride the subway.
  4. The worst thing that will happen to you in a mugging is that the mugger will take your shoes.
  5. Writers only take their inspiration from the messed up lives of their friends.
  6. The most likely person for a highly-motivated, highly-overworked, and highly-educated lawyer to end up with is a bartender.
  7. Who will make her move to Brooklyn.
  8. And be the primary caretaker of his ailing mother.
  9. Every woman needs a gay friend to have a truly complete life.
  10. Gay friends come in two flavors: nebbishly queeny, and outrageously queeny.
  11. There’s a third type, the incredibly hot underwear model, but within a few years that character type will be straight anyway.
  12. Female friendships are all-consuming, have no boundaries of time, subject, or privacy, and absolutely necessary for life because your girlfriends will support you no matter what.
  13. They will also, however, mock your grooming habits and sexual partners.
  14. Women need to be strong, self-actualized, and firm in their knowledge of who they are.
  15. However, they should also change their lives completely for a man. Such changes include but are not limited to: changing your boro of residence, changing your city of residence, changing your religion.
  16. You will start out by declaring your sexual freedom from the past. You will plan to enact this by having the same soul-less, commitment-less relationships of the douchiest of guys.
  17. You will then spend the next several years doing completely the opposite.
  18. A gentle, caring man who is a committed artist, interested in you and your career, and supportive of your friends and life-choices will enter your life. You must reject this person.
  19. A man who alternates between a creepy sexual obsession with you and treating you like an afterthought to his social calendar will enter your life. He will specialize in sending mixed signals. He will ignore your needs and career. He will break up with you, get married, and only then declare his love for you. He will enter and exit your life with a total disregard for your feelings, and refuse to ever discuss any of these points and how they relate to your relationship. He will, in short, treat you as an amusing accessory. You must cling to this man like a drowning sailor to a life preserver.
  20. There will be a television show about four female friends who engage in frank discussions about their sex lives. Often these discussions will take place during a meal. A frequent subject will be the difficulties of dating at their age. In the 1980s that age will be the late 50s. A decade later, the age will be the mid-30s. This will be considered progress.

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Where In The World Is C.L. Minou?

Categories: all about me, silly blather, the tiniest violin in the world

Well, for once, back here.

I do apologize, ducks. This has been a slightly weird week: I mean, I was in the Guardian, and the Carnival, and also work was busy (I was doing stuff at 10 pm on Tuesday) and oh yeah it was my birthday yesterday and so I had to go out and have drinks with my girlfriends (and one of their boyfriends: he was our Designated Boy.) And then back to work but oh yeah, my enormous cat, Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser, has been sick and I had to take him to the vet, which will set back my primary financial mission for 2010, the Payinge Off Of Ye Ginormous Credite Carde Debte.

So: I know! Wild!

The other thing is my job. I’m glad I have it and it’s mostly not particularly hard (even if they’re paying me a lot less than I’m used to), and it’s cool to be able to work from home–but after spending over ten hours at my desk, I tend to be a little too burned out to sit down and write. At least this week. I think that will sort out eventually.

But there will be more stuff, eventually! Here and at Tiger Beatdown. I have some thoughts about the whole Bindel thing and Second Wave radical feminism that ties into kyriarchy nicely. And I will eventually write something about “Heathers.” Also, Sophie had a really good comment that tied into my post on Mary Daly and I just want you to know, Sophie, that I noticed! And have been thinking about it! And will, one of these days, write about it!

So, stay tuned, you who tune in. And if you’re not tuning in, why not try? Although, given that you’re not tuning in, I’m not so sure how it is you’ll hear me ask you to tune in. But it all comes out in the wash.

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The View From My Kitchen Window

Categories: all about me, silly blather

Greetings Ducks, from the home office! Which isn’t even really an office, but it is in my home. My kitchen, actually: space here in The Great American Metropolis is at a premium, let me tell you!

Lately it has become an actual office of sorts, because of that gig I mentioned last week, which I do from the comfort of home. Well, relative comfort: while I’m no longer unemployed, I am underemployed; I need to do about 50 hours a week at my current rate to make my monthly expenses. I’m not really complaining…well, I am a bit, because this is way below my former rate, alas.

That’s the economy, folks.

I do have a view from my window, of sorts–it’s on the air shaft between my building and the one next door. Now, this was supposed to be an improvement, way back in the 19th century, over just having buildings cheek-by-jowl; but the reality is that they don’t help all that much. The shafts let in almost no light (in the spring, I sometimes get some light in through the shaft in the afternoon) and they have no draw whatsoever, so you don’t get much in the way of cross-ventilation. And my view is a brick wall.

Still, it’s nice to have an office with a window.

Working from home doesn’t particularly bother me–writer, remember?–though it is a drag to be chained to my chair all day long without being able to run out for a while (I’m on a timeclock, and I’d have to punch out if I was up from my keyboard for too long.) It’s a bit ironic that I should end up with this gig, though (and not just because my brother used to work for them, something I didn’t know until I applied for the job.) Ironic because a lot of trans people end up either wanting a job like this, or having to take a job like this because it’s the only job they can safely do.

Trans folks come in all shapes and sizes; and sometimes those shapes, for whatever reason (most often because the person is still in the middle of transition), are harder for cis people to “peg” as one gender or another. This causes enormous discomfort on the part of the cis person (see unboxedqueer’s groovy post about this today at Below the Belt), which they immediately pass along to the trans person. Because, that’s like the totally fair thing to do, right? I mean, it’s the freak’s, I mean, your problem, right? Right?

Right.

So a lot of trans people have to look for work that doesn’t involve interaction with other poeple. (And yeah, the phone often counts, if you’re MtF–phone voice is the hardest voice to manage.) I’m fortunate enough to have a skill that lets’ me do this and still survive; many other folks aren’t. But it must be their fault, right?

Right.

Back around Halloween a lot of folks like this Onion bit about finding costumes for your effeminate boy. I wasn’t one of them, though–to me, the bit ultimately felt pretty cruel and lost the point of laughing at the bigoted announcers in favor of indulging in some cruelty towards the kids. You know, like…holding people up to your own standards of gender presentation? Which never ever hurts anybody, or makes it hard for them to get a job? Yeah. I much preferred this SNL bit instead:

Homocil Commercial – watch more funny videos

Until you come around.

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And Other Stories in Transphobia (Yawn)

Categories: don't get your panties in a bunch, media tool kit, silly blather, teh tranz

Hey, I haven’t said anything about David Letterman yet!

I mean, not that there’s often much to say about David Letterman, besides he’s mostly a jerk. It’s, you know, what he’s famous for.

But I guess you might have heard about this…

Yeah. OK. Wow, a show hosted by a known jerk (of the douchey, cheating on his wife with interns in a bedroom he had built at the studio just for that purpose kind of way) engages in some cheap-shot transphobia. Yawn. Hand me the remote…

But what’s that you say? Speak up, Straw-Reader-I-am-making-up-for-this-piece! Are you saying that Dave at least sort of respectable towards Ms. Sampson? And that the joke is really on sidekick douchebag Kalter? That I should not, you know, get my panties all in a twist about things, you hysterical trann–sorry, you like to be called a transgenderdamajig now, right?

Sorry, Straw Reader, you’re wrong! A transgendamajig is a drink, not a gender identity, one of the many fascinating cocktails I dreamed up while vacationing on painkillers in Thailand! But you’re also wrong about the joke.

Sure, true to his straightdouche persona, Dave didn’t say anything spiteful about Ms. Sanders. (He also called her a transgendered person, not woman. Asshole.) But the joke wasn’t on Kalter–it was decidedly on Ms. Sampson.

Because, you see, at heart this was a gay joke. (Amazing! Letterman homophobic too? Whodathunkit?) Kalter is upset because he slept with a “man,” not a transgendered woman. At heart, this bit was calling Ms. Sanders a man.

Which is pretty much the definition of transphobia.

I of course, don’t watch any of the talk shows myself–I really could care less about the latest vapid anecdote or stupid plug a celebrity comes on to talk about. (And even The Daily Show is wearing thin on me these days.) Instead, when not reading Russian novels in French or French movies in Russian, I watch Monty Python reruns. Because our world is so surreal nowadays that they seem positively normal.

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Trailers For Films That Were Never Made: Dennis Moore

Categories: silly blather

So Liss over at Shakesville notes that there’s a new Ridley Scott version of Robin Hood coming in 2010, starring Russel Crowe as Robin Hood. This would be yawn inducing news, but for her hilarious transcript of the trailer:

TW] A lone figure runs through dark empty woods. Armor-clad knights ride horses through the woods. A tripwire is released and a net flies up. A wolf walks among corpses from a battle. A man peeps on an undressing woman. A thread is pulled through cloth. Light streams in through a stone wall. Armor-clad warriors creep through the woods. Text: “From Ridley Scott. The director of Gladiator.” Armor-clad knights ride horses on the beach. Armor-clad knights run from the water onto the beach. Russell Crowe emerges from water screaming and raising a sword. More armor-clad knights ride horses on the beach. Russell Crowe rides a horse. Someone else strikes a tree with a hatchet. Armor-clad knights scream and get hit by falling trees and fight with swords and shit. Russell Crowe kisses a totes babe. Russell Crowe on horseback throws a sword. Text: “Academy Award Winner Russell Crowe.” Russell Crowe looks at a bald dude with a sword. Text: “Academy Award Winner Cate Blanchett.” Cate Blanchett appears for a brief instant; cut back to bald dude with a sword, who chops the fuck out of someone. Text: “Universal Pictures Presents.” Sword-fighting! Fire! Text: “The story behind the legend.” Vaguely swarthy dude with beard holds knife at totes babe’s exposed bosom. Hey, arrows! A dirty dude hand rubs over Cate Blanchett’s face. Russell Crowe runs. Text: “The hero behind the outlaw.” Gold coins. Swarthy dude on horse grabs Cate Blanchett by the neck. Russell Crowe rides a horse, waving a sword. Russell Crowe kneels over a fallen comrade and makes the sign of the cross. Says: “Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions.” Ooh, arrows again! Text: “Robin Hood.” Russell Crowe aims an arrow, blood on his face. Text: “Coming 2010.”

 Now, that got me thinking. I really don’t need to see another Robin Hood movie: even the presence of BRIAN BLESSED and Alan Rickman couldn’t save the unfortunate Costner vehicle Robin Dude: Prince of Dweebs, and everything ends up just being a sketch on the 1930s Errol Flynn classic.

But it did give me an idea for a blog post series! Movie trailers for films that were never made! So I thought, instead of Russel Crowe as Robin Hood, howabout him as another hero of English folklore–Dennis Moore!

Dennis Moore? That’s right, Dennis Moore:

Below is a working script for the Dennis Moore trailer. Note how, as per the conventions of The Film of the Series, I worked in a cameo from the original version!

A group of richly dressed nobles get into a carriage. Text: “In an age of kings…” A masked rider on a horse rides through the night. British soldiers in 18th century uniforms emerge from the mist. Various quick cuts of poor people in rags. Text: “One man dared to stand up.” Another shot of the masked rider. A coach rumbles through the darkness. Cut to soldiers firing muskets. Something explodes. The coach pulls up in front of the masked figure, seen from behind in a slow tracking shot from his stirrups to his hat.

Russell Crowe: Stand and Deliver!”

More soldiers. Text: “From Academy Award-winning director Ridley Scott.” Horsemen ride; Crowe rakes coins into a bag at a tavern. Text: “Starring Oscar winner Russell Crowe.” A brief two second shot of Cate Blanchett in period dress, barely enough for us to register someone blonde, elegant, and far too talented for this crap. Text, briefly: “AndacademyawardwinningladyactorCateBlanchett” Crowe, with a pistol, is relieving the occupants of a carriage of their valuables. One starts to run away. Crowe picks up an axe and flings it sideways, chopping the fleeing man’s head off; the blood, as Eric Idle says, goes “pssssss” in slow motion.

Crowe: This redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought.

Guns! Soldiers! Fire! Poor people dancing! Wealthy nobles at a ball! Horses ride through the dark. Something murky happens while a rock ballad plays. Crowe clutches Blanchett under a waterfall. Text: “DENNIS MOORE”

John Cleese, dressed as a country squire, sits in his library holding a book. He looks up.

Cleese: Dennis? How did the day go? Did you get any gold?

Crowe, off-screen: Sorry, father, they were all out.

Cleese: Ah, I see. Very good. (beat) Did they have any….lupins?

Text: COMING IN 2010

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Blogging From Home: Anomie Of Unemployment Edition

Categories: all about me, silly blather

Okay, unemployed is a strong word for me: I haven’t worked a fulltime W-2 job in over 10 years, and I have some contract work that will be coming down the pike soonish, plus a serious line on an actual job. But still: for the first time in a couple of years, I have no place to be to make money right now.

Funny, it actually is like the last time I was out of work around Christmas, four years ago: which incidentally was about two months before the collapse of my marriage.

Anyway, my damn jet lag (and spending too much time reading a Culture novel the last few nights) finally caught up with me and I crashed this morning–fed the Evil Feline Overlords and passed out in bed again. So I didn’t get much done today. I was going to walk over to the library to get more Banks novels, but I checked the website and they’re all out or on hold.

So I’m going to treat myself to a fabulously cheap calzone for dinner. I thought about ordering a movie from my cable company, but the best I saw was the new Transformers movie. Then I remembered I have “Ginger Snaps” on my DVR, and I also set the same to record “Heathers,” a movie I had never seen before. So definitely some blog fodder coming.

Anything is better than watching TNT tonight–they’re showing Spielberg’s 9/11 porn adaption of “War of the Worlds.”

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The Second Awakening: Special Retro-Mobile Edition!

Categories: all about me, posting at the speed of Amtrak, silly blather, teh tranz, This Was My Life

Sgniteerg Skcud! I mean, greetings, ducks! I’m on my way home again and blogging at 50 mph, after spending a weekend teaching myself to play the theme from Love Story, listening to my niece read to me, and finally catching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu. Which, along with my return homewards, has me in a retrospective mood.

I didn’t watch Buffy back when it was on TV–oddly enough, I had seen (and even liked) the movie, and maybe that kept me away at first; I remembered the film as harmless fluff. By the time I heard that Joss Whedon had taken it in a very different, darker, and (as usual) beautifully-characterized direction, it was too late to catch up on things and I didn’t want to try to come in late. So I missed it, until now.

I’m not one of those trans peeps who regrets not having a girlhood, per se; I know how lousy my adolescence was, and I really don’t think having been female would have helped much. (Or would it? I’ve become such a different–and better–person since I transitioned, maybe it would have worked out…) But that doesn’t keep me from occasionally getting blue about–about the tremendous waste involved with my early life, the years of being strangled with doubt and confusion, the horrific amount of mental baggage I carried around. And then too there is the consciousness of not having had a girlhood, of not having had to deal with being a teen ager, of all the ways my history separates me from other women.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t compensations; I was raised to believe that all things were possible for me, whereas sadly far too many women I know were raised to believe that they could be only those things that were proper. I might have been drowning in dysphoria, but I was never stifled by sexism, never silenced by society. I might have struggled with my assigned role, but it was a lot easier role to deal with than being an adolescent female.

On the other hand, though, try being the boy in sixth grade with a stuffed animal collection that covers his bed. That hill ain’t so fun to climb either.

I adore Buffy so far. I love how the show manages to have empowered female characters, to show the human side of everyone, all without denying the ordinary pressures of adolescent society: Buffy might be a superhuman being with an awesome responsibility, but she worries about being popular; Xander’s sly self-deprecation reminds me of someone I used to know (Ahem. It was one way to deal with always being picked on.) And I love Willow, even if she hasn’t become a witch yet.

Plus, Joss Whedon’s pitch statement–“high school as a horror movie”–pretty much sums up my recollection of those days.

Even so, watching it can’t but help stir the pot of my memories–if part of my tranisition has been learning about how unhappy I used to be (without even knowing it), then high school was me at my most miserable–tormented by my strangeness, my awkwardness, and the horrible feelings I had that I feared were at the root of everything. Watching Buffy can lead me to those “if only” moments–if only I knew that I could be a woman, if only I knew how happy it would make me–if only I could have just been born female and avoided all of this pain.

I can’t change that. I’m not even sure I would if I could; the person I am today was forged on the anvil of my transness, and I would be a very different person indeed without it. And I like that person, more and more every day.

So I shouldn’t regret the past. If only I could.

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The Second Awakening: Special Mobile Edition!

Categories: all about me, silly blather, travels with CL, your rda of misogyny

Welcome again, ducks! Today’s post comes to you live from Amtrak! I am on my way to visit my parents, and as we are a Green outfit here at TSA, we’re riding mass transit. I am writing this on my trusty blue Acer Inspire One, which I bought for the trip to Thailand and has become my indispensable travelling companion–it fits in all my purses, and with the wireless broadband modem, I can blog anywhere!

Speaking of that trip, I passed through a large swath of Asia during it, and in honor of the first post I’ve written at 50 miles per hour, I thought I’d share some impressions of sex roles and segregation I gathered on the way.

Our first stop was Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. We only were there to transfer flights–if you’re flying to India or Thailand, I highly recommend Etihad Airlways; they spare no expense, the planes are comfortable even in coach, and the food was actually good. But even that brief layover gave me a sense of the character of the place. There were women working, but mostly as servers; the salesmen we saw at the various stores were, well, men. Abu Dhabi is a crossroads in the Persian Gulf, so we saw all varieties of dress, from full burqas to women in completely Western dress. (The flight attendants on Etihad, though, wore these odd combination pillbox hats and veils.) The bathrooms were a bit different; there was an attendant/chaperone, and they follow the British custom of having full-own rooms with doors instead of stalls.

One definite difference: the metal detectors were sex-segregated, to make sure that you were only touched by someone of the same gender. (This was to be a recurring theme, we shall see, and one that usually left me pretty worried.)

India: Saying anything authoritative about India is an excercise in futility; it’s too big, too varied, too everything. Our tour was exclusively in the northern part, so there were more Muslims there than other parts of India; again, there was a lot of variety in how Muslim women dressed, though when we visited the Jammu Mosque in Delhi, I saw quite a few people in burquas.

Indian standards of modesty are different than those found in America: bare bellies are fine (and an artifact of wearing a sari, as I know now–I bought two), but shoulders and knees should be covered. Both my boyfriend and I had to don ceremonial, wildly-patterned caftans when we visited the Jammu Masjid; once again, the metal detectors and clothing attendants were strictly sex-segragated.

Indian business and commerce are far more completely dominated by men than I was used to. We did meet several businesswomen, but almost exclusively in hotels; in stores, and the various “local craftsman” factories we were taken to by our guides (so we could be browbeat for 20 minutes in the hope of buying a rug/inlaid marble table/block printed cloth–the guide got a commission, of course), the people who did the talking were always male. As were all our guides; come to think of it, I think all the Indian guides I saw were male, as were a majority of the servers in restaurants.


Plate 1: The Author contemplates that the most beautiful building in the world was built for a dead woman.

Moreover, the quintessential picture of Indian poverty, I am sad to say, is a woman with her children. While I’m sure I saw some men begging–I certainly saw many, many poor people of both sexes; in India, if a space is flat, somebody’s living on it–the people who approached us were almost universally women. (On the other hand, the people who tried to sell us overpriced trinkets while we waited on various lines were exclusively male.) Every public bathroom I went to in India had an attendant; I’m not sure if that was always true for my boyfriend, but it was for me. These were very poor women (or heartbreakingly, little girls) who handed you a napkin to use to wipe yourself in exchange for a small tip; we usually gave them 50 ruppes, around a dollar. I can’t speak with any sure knowledge, but I would hardly be surprised to find that these women were Dalits.

On our way out of Indira Gandhi Airport (the first place I ever saw a traffic jam of luggage carts), we once again were run through sex-segregated metal detectors. These were more elaborate than the ones in Abu Dhabi; you were in a completely screened-off area, where you got wanded by the guard. Of the proper sex, of course.

Perhaps nothing captures the attitudes I encountered in India better than this: I was the one who booked the trip, who paid for it, who had negotiated with the tour company. When we arrived in Delhi, my name was on the card the tour representative held up at the airport exit. Yet when we got in the car–I was sitting right behind the rep–he turned to my boyfriend and said, “So, sir, is this your first time in India?”

Invisibility and being pushed around by men were the hallmarks of the trip for me.

Cambodia: Once we left India, we noticed a marked change in the presence of women in business–in that we actually saw several. Men still did most of the jobs that involved talking, including guide to foreign tourists. Like India, my boyfriend was spoken to first and more often.

I have no idea what the rules for the separation of the sexes are in Cambodia, but there seemed to be something subtle going on around us: our guide, Mr. K, constantly talked about the pictures of the apsara, or dancing girls that you see in bas-relief everywhere on the Angkor temples. He was often wistful about it, whispering: “Aspara. Dancing girls. Very beautiful girls.” We suspected dating was pretty complicated in Cambodia.

Plate 2: Mr. K wants you to know he feels nothing for these women. Nothing!

Thailand: We passed through Thailand twice, actually: once, very briefly, on the way to Siem Reap in Cambodia, and then of course of the Purpose of the Visit. Thailand, least in Bangkok and Suvarnabhumi Airport is huge, and more modern than LAX or Newark Liberty; if not for the presence of signs in Thai, you’d hardly know you weren’t in America.

Plate 3: It’s like Los Angeles, just with worse traffic.

In Thailand we finally saw something approaching gender equity. Women were firmly entrenched in the workplace, at about the same proportion that you find in America. Men talked to me–sometimes even first!–and women were definitely assertive, at least to me.

That isn’t to say that there wasn’t a lot of sexism; there was. Thai (or at least Bangkok) culture has something resembling a mix of 50s-style mores, plus a thousand years of Buddhism, plus modern capitalistic ruthless. My nurses told me, for example, that it was still considered somewhat risque for women to smoke–I mean, holy Mad Men!

But at least in Thailand (and Cambodia) I could pee by myself; there weren’t any bathroom attendants. And the metal detectors were unisex.

This is the face of progress, ducks: a man being wanded by a female security guard.

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Introit; or, Why I Am Bothering To Blog

Categories: Allusions, Faux-Austenism, introductions, Network references, silly blather

It is a truth universally acknowledged that people with nothing better to say will start with a Jane Austen allusion.

Now that’s out of the way, we can begin.

I’ve chosen anonymity here for reasons both good and bad. I am a woman. I am also trans, recently post-op. I am a feminist. I am (or was) both a writer and a blogger.

The crucible of my transition has left me…well, transformed, yes, obviously; but profoundly shaken. I have emerged from it more committed than ever to feminism, more implacably opposed to privilege in all its forms (including my own) than ever, and filled with an insane amount of free-floating outrage.

So I’ll take it out on you, Dear Reader. Why? Because I’m on the internet, silly.