Kaymyth

I probably will, sooner or later. But it can wait another year until my car is paid off.

I regret that I have but one upvote to give...

Eh, that's what I get for sticking with a student-model Artley for 25 years.

Every time you say "cuddleswarm" I get a mental image of a horde of crazy clockwork fairies descending upon some poor hapless soul and enveloping them in a cloud of hugs and mad cackling.

I know the feeling. Espiegele is a danged tough piece, but it's not outside my ability to tackle. You know, if I practice. And, er, learn the fingerings for those insanely high notes that few flute players dare to tackle. But my poor flute just isn't capable of belting them out without sounding horrible. High E-natural in particular takes some serious breath focus to make it sound.

The correct pronoun here would be "zie".

Hah! I'll have to tell zir that zie's no longer the only self-identified Fabulous Monster in the world. I suspect there will be a victory dance.

Nah, zie ticks the 'F' box, because that matches what people see when they see zir. But in zir mind, it stands for Fabulous Monster.

Yeh. My friend doesn't demand that anyone call zir 'it', but has just admitted that's how zie thinks of zirself. Of course, this is also the same friend who decided that since zie has to pick a gender and thus mark a box in forms, it means that clearly zir gender is 'Fabulous Monster'.

The best birthday I ever had was when my husband bought a kilt on the sly and surprised me by wearing it for me. Dagnabbit, men in kilts are sexy. Well, given that this friend just thinks of zirself that way, I think that zie doesn't deserve bees. Zie'll use whatever pronouns for someone else that they declare for themselves. Zie also tends to think that zie's always wearing drag, whether wearing girly clothes or boyly clothes.

AUGH. Why do they always do that? They never go off in the middle of the day, it's always in the dark of night and right when you're in the deepest level of sleep so you wake up in a panic and spend several minutes freaking out trying to figure out why the world is ending. And naturally, the only way to shut them up is to take out and/or replace the battery, which usually involves finding a ladder.

I spent a little while last night drooling over a professional Pearl model on Woodwind Brasswind's website. It's so pretty. And it has the stabilizer keys for high E and super-duper-insanely high C. I'd have to get plugs for the open holes, though. I have child-sized hands and double-jointed fingers that have a tendency to lock. I'd never be able to keep my hands in the correct position to cover the holes.

I know that I first assumed you were female, but that had everything to do with the fact that your avatar was Nightmare Moon at the time. I believe I corrected myself before the false assumption ever surfaced in conversation. It's common enough that there's even an official set of gender-neutral pronouns now. You have her/hers, him/his, and now zie/zir. They're actually a little awkward (physically) in spoken language, but work well in written. Though the one truly gender-neutral person I know in real life has a tendency to think of zirself as 'it'. I can't quite bring myself to call zir 'it', though, because it just seems rude. Upvotes for you. This. Feminism is supposed to be about equality and choosing the path that works best for you.

The full score sheet music for Claude Bolling & Jean-Pierre Rampal's Suite No 2 for Flute & Jazz Piano Trio arrived today. I tried a run-through of Espiegele. EGADS That is all. EDIT: I lied. That's not all. I need a better flute.

A lot of this. To continue on that vein, just from the conversations I've had with others, it's a lot like this. There's a big difference between adhering to a gender stereotype and having a gender identity that differs from your sex. Most people who are trans* of some type experience a level of body dysphoria. It's not about whether you act feminine or masculine, it's about who you are at the very core. Little things like hearing a female-timbred voice come out of your mouth when your brain insists that you should, at the very highest, be a tenor are constantly jarring to trans* folks. Basically, their body is telling them one thing, while their brain is telling them something completely different. It can be a bit hard to grok for those of us whose internal identities match up with our external appearance. Imagine going to bed one night and waking up in a body of the opposite sex. You're still you, exactly as you would have looked, but suddenly you're different. And your memories and all of the people around you are telling you that this is the way it's always been, but every core of your being is telling you that it's wrong. That's what it's like for a trans* person.

I am female, though my husband and I don't quite fit into all of the societal gender norms. Part of that is that he's a fairly mild-mannered sort of guy, and my last endocrine workup showed that I have somewhat higher testosterone levels than the average. But yeah, I like to get my husband flowers for Valentine's Day, and I don't intend to stop doing it anytime soon. As for my social circle, I have at least one friend for every bit of the LGBT alphabet soup, along with a few who have just about had to make up their own letters. At least one is gender-neutral, and I now know two different gender-fluid people who tend to drift back and forth on the dial.

Thanks, Everyone. I am currently posting from my phone, as we are down in the basement for a tornado warning. Don't freak out, this is perfectly normal Midwestern weather. EDIT: Well, that was fun. I aten't ded.

But by that logic, God essentially set up billions of people to fail by designing them to be imperfect and then letting all sorts of "false" religions pop up everywhere. It doesn't matter how good at being a human you are, if you aren't lucky enough to choose the "right" religion, you're up the proverbial creek. Why is having faith in X more important than making a genuine effort to live a good life? I'm sorry, I really need to let this drop. I don't think I can maintain this line of conversation and keep things civil.

I guess I've just never been able to wrap my head around the notion that "worthiness" is judged on standards that we were basically designed to never be able to achieve. It just seems bizarre to me, and like the system is skewed towards only rewarding the people who shower attention on the "correct" deity. Then again, I also don't subscribe to the idea that all sin is equal, or even that some things that certain religions consider to be sins are sinful at all.

Oh, no you don't. You leave KC, and all of my plans for a steampunk band go kaput. You're gonna stay here and suffer with the rest of us, mister.

I will take hugs. Thank you. Obi has always been the best dog. My Leia is only about a year and a half younger than he is, but I'm hoping she's got some extra longevity in her from being a smaller breed. As my father-in-law says, dogs are wonderful, wonderful creatures, but in the end they'll break your heart. They just don't live long enough. My grandparents have been on a downslide for several years now, so it's not like it's a surprise...but yeah, it's tough watching time march on. My mom's parents are a little over a decade younger, so they're at least likely to be around for a while yet. Still, it's strange. I'm more affected by the aging of the people around me than my own number slowly ticking up. Of course, if my grandparents and great-grandparents are anything to go by, I've got some serious longevity genes from both sides of the family.

This is Obi-Wan: He is my mom and stepdad's 14-year-old dog, a short-haired collie/unidentified terrier mix. He is almost completely deaf, has cataracts so can't see very well anymore, and a couple of months ago had a stroke. He falls a lot now, wobbles quite a bit, and is having trouble eating properly. He developed an abscess on his neck from all the shots the vet's been having to give him. Mom and Stepdad are doing the best they can to take care of him, but it's only a matter of time. I remember when my brother brought home a tiny, energetic, white-and-yellow puppy about 14 years ago. Even worse, my paternal grandfather has been moved into the Alzheimer's ward. He doesn't recognize any of his grandkids or great-grandkids anymore. My grandmother goes from the assisted living section to visit him multiple times a day, but he sleeps most of the time. She's doing all right, but she's had a few strokes herself. I know that they're 93, but that doesn't make this any easier. When I was a kid, my grandmother was the one running around taking care of all the old folks. The current state of things doesn't compute in my brain.

Warning! Opinion underneath the spoiler tags! Oh noez! I'm just going to address the Second Law of Thermodynamics, because that one's got an answer that a lot of people seem to miss. It states, essentially, that in any closed system, energy will tend towards a more chaotic state. Creating order requires an expenditure of energy, and contributes to the eventual heat death of the universe. However, and this is important, Earth is not a closed system. We are constantly being bombarded all day, every day, with vast amounts of solar energy. This energy can thus be used to create order (i.e. evolution or other complex states of matter). Basically, the sun is a giant entropy sink for us. And someday, it's going to turn into a red giant, burn out, and explode. That's your tending towards disorder.

For me, it depends on the museum. When it comes to art, I tend to prefer Old Stuff to Modern Stuff, but if it's pretty, then I'm relatively happy. It doesn't stop me from cracking jokes at the art, though. I've had museum docents shoot me snooty looks. But air and space museums? Those are cool. Space is cool. Airplanes are cool. My grandfather was a fighter pilot in World War II, so I always keep an eye out for the models that he flew. The best kinds of museums are the science ones with interactive exhibits. Doing stuff is infinitely superior to ogling stuff, so I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. The St. Louis Science Center is one of the best; it's got tons of things to play with and build and knock down again. And it's got a bridge over the interstate that has windows in the floor and radar guns you can point at the cars.