I inherited a digital camera, so I'm madly running around taking pictures of things. My oldest niece has been sending me pictures, so I'm returning the favor. I just hope an academic gamer-geek's life isn't too boring for her. I'm hoping the people upstairs left the door open to their patio, so I can go get a picture of the Space Needle from Chez Jen.

But I've taken a bunch of pictures of some of my knit finished objects. The whole gallery is here. Here's my first bit of fandom knitting. They're Rose's wrist warmers from the "Doomsday" episode of Doctor Who:



The pattern for them is here. Have I mentioned how easy it is to get a camera working under linux? Edit /etc/fstab, mount it, and you're good to go. USB Mass Storage Devices, I love you.

So a post over on Erin's blog got me thinking in a roundabout way about men and women. The original post was about some survey that Colleen Hammond did, in which a percentage of men are threatened by women in pants. In my response, I wondered if her sample of men isn't skewed.

I'm in a male-dominated field, and it's safe to say that all my colleagues are men. All of my professors in my field have been men, and those I studied with privately were also possessors of a Y chromosome. A few assholes aside (fortunately very few and far between), I've never had a problem. Certainly not with any of my professors--who've all been encouraging.

In the interest of full disclosure, I dress like a geek. My day job involves computer support, and it wouldn't be practical--or safe, considering some of the crawlspaces I'm in--to dress in overly girly clothes, not that I'd be comfortable wearing such things. Also I don't have the figure for overly revealing clothing. So it's geek chic for me. My colleagues and professors have always been nothing but professional with me, and I with them.

Am I "feminizing" my discipline, when that term usually refers to watering down rigor? I'm held to the same standards as anyone else in my program. One thing I find refreshing from my colleagues is that they're--sometimes brutally--honest. If I weren't toeing the line or doing my end of the work, I'd hear. Then again, where are the non-white people in my discipline? I can't think of any PoC in my department, much less among the faculty.

One of the more eye-opening moments came in the context of a seminar. Someone played a music video featuring scantily-clad, ultra-thin women. I anticipated the rest of the room being attracted to it. Newp. To a person, they were all disgusted by it. Comments ranged from "Ew, gross" to "Poor thing needs a cheeseburger."

So where are all these men that are so titillated by women, that they're resentful of them in pants and can't function when women are in "men's" jobs? I'm sure they're there, like I'm sure there are women who're inappropriate at a job. Resentful at my presence? Threatened by my jeans? Doesn't overly give my male colleagues any credit.

So I like curry. I like all kinds of curry. And I'm a total chili head, so I like spice. (As one friend put it when eating pho with me--"Hey, did you know your food is glowing?" And from the Hoopy Frood when eating Thai with me: "I can feel your food's heat from across the table." Others have mentioned something about my food not having anything on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.) What can I say? I can handle my spice.

I haven't made Thai curry in awhile--I was embarrassed to admit to my Thai roommates that I used curry paste as a base. Then I asked them for their recipe. It included pulling out a tub of curry paste from the fridge. Fry up some meat or protein. Dump a few healthy tablespoons of curry paste in. Cook with the meat for a bit. Then dump your veggies (bamboo shoots, mushrooms, whatever) cover with coconut milk. Give it a splash of fish sauce to taste. (You can also add lime leaves or basil leaves.) Serve over rice. (Jasmine.)

Japanese curry: Brown some cut-up meat. Cube some potatoes, carrots and onion. I like to give them a quick toss in the pan to get them started and carmelize a bit. Look on the back of the box of curry to see what the proper ratio of water to curry is. Dump the water over and boil until everything is mostly cooked. Then dump in your curry cubes. Thicken and serve over rice. (Short-grain.)

So I have had notoriously bad luck cooking Indian food from scratch. I lived with a post-doc from India for awhile, and she'd laugh off my requests for recipes, saying I wouldn't be able to handle the heat. (O ye of little faith...) But the elusive cuisine was out of my grasp. Thus, I have discovered the wonder that is Pataks. And...I have tasty curry atop a fluffy pile of basmati (organic) rice. As my neighbors can attest to my contented belch, I have discovered how to make good Indian food.

Their hot curry paste isn't that hot. I wonder if they tone it down for export across the Pond. Now if I can find an import shop that sells shetland wool for lace, Doctor Who DVD's, and curry paste, I would be very happy. (And probably never leave the house.)

Speaking of curry, it seems that there are some who are addicted to it. Who, me? Naw, I can stop eating curry at any time...

Can the subaltern sing?

Something doesn't sit right with me about this blurb in my alma mater's website. I grew up in that area, and I know what kind of poverty those kids face. I can't get out of my mind how incredibly colonial the author's being.

What strikes me about it is how jubilant she is to learn that her students are capable of learning something like how to read music. Her comment about them sticking with music so they can get scholarships to college reminds me of the comments about PoC playing basketball so they have a shot at college. Not for their own merits or abilities. They're not studying western art music for a well-rounded education or to participate in culture. (In the interest of full disclosure, although I was a music major, I was on mostly academic scholarships.)

I grew up with teachers telling me that although I was in honors and AP classes, my coursework wouldn't mean much and that I would never be able to keep up with college-level work, since my school didn't have the opportunities that other more well-off schools did. I was also told that I'd never be able to compete musically because I couldn't afford lessons from the best people, like other more economically-advantaged people could.

I object to her perpetuating power and class structures, as if western art music is only the realm of the financially elite. Instrumental music isn't the be-all and end-all of western art music, either. There's music theory, music history, musicology, historical musicology, and composition. All of which don't require any financial backing beyond a library card and basic research skills. Yet she's holding up an expensive instrument as their only exposure to the vast discipline of music.

I'm all for helping the less-advantaged out. But if the so-called help is only to keep existing power structures in order, then it's worthless. I don't see any empowering going on at Lakewood.

More "Doctor Who." More mega-spoilers behind the cut bits. I promise this will be it for awhile. Sadly no new episodes until Christmas. Maybe it's just as well, because I have this dissertation to write.

You know, I'm a composer. I'm in academe. I know how brutal and cruel people can get about one's work. I've gotten my fair share of snark disguised as constructive criticism or thinly-veiled personal attacks. I'd like to say it gets easier to deal with, and in some respects it does. One would hope academics, especially, would be more into judging a person's work on the work's merits, and not getting personal, but they're just as petty as anyone else.

So the "Doctor Who" season finale was last Saturday, with two episodes leading up to it. People either loved it or hated it. OK, fine. I get this. What I don't get are those--read any fan community on LJ or board--who take it as a personal insult that the episode didn't meet their expectations.

OK. Extrapolating to something else, namely "Crossroads, part 2" of "Battlestar Galactica." I was disappointed with it, but at the end of the day, it still entertained me for 45 minutes, and I've got the season 3 DVD on pre-order from Amazon. Am I a raving fangirl? Maybe, but if people want me to ramble on, I'd be glad to elucidate where I thought it could be better. Does it mean anything about the writers and producers? Nope. Did it jump the shark? Nowhere near as badly as "Battlestar 1980" did. Arguably BSG is still one of the best programs on TV. I doubt that Ronald D. Moore is out to pee in people's breakfast cereal, like people are convinced the writers and producers of "Doctor Who" are.

So back to "Doctor Who." Was I expecting some of the ending? Yah, parts. Did I think there were things that could've been tighter? Absolutely. I'd love it if they released the Criterion Director's Cut of all my favorite shows. But more importantly did it follow its own logic? Yes, as well as they could with so many threads in 51 minutes.


Things I didn't have a problem with: glowy Doctor rejuvinated by the psychic field. If anything, I really wish they would've developed this further. They've never really gone into any detail about the psychic capabilities of Time Lords aside from a few throwaway lines and when the plot suits it. I was blown away with the Doctor forgiving
the Master. I don't think defeating him with words was out of character in the least. If anything, that's the Doctor's greatest strength.

The Master really needed to die. He went out at the top of his game, and I think why the Master became almost comic in the 1980's was because he was defeated almost every other week by the Doctor. It's like Diana in "V." You can't have a big badass supervillain, when they're defeated by the good guys all the time. They have no potency if they aren't a real threat. The Master was badass, and in dying he won.

Martha needed to leave, even temporarily. Ever seen the movie "White" ("Blanc") by Kieslowski? Same deal as between Karol and Dominique as between the Doctor and Martha. (Ok, with a lot less sex.) You can't have a relationship--even friendship--when there's such a great inequality of power. I also don't doubt for an instant that the character of the Doctor loves his companions, but it's not a human love. (You saw that in "Human Nature/"Family of Blood.") Either companions come to terms with it (Martha) or they don't. (Tegan, Adric.)

The funeral for the Master: Yeah, OK, they used a pyre in "Return of the Jedi," but so do a hell of a lot of cultures. My first thought was that it looked a lot like a Balinese Hindu cremation. And, really, how else are you going to get rid of an archetypal character?

In the end, though, I thought it was a good resolution to the series. The things I enjoyed far outweighed the things I didn't. I think I need to quit reading fansites, since I'm so fed up reading personal attacks on people who have done nothing to me.