A Few More Drops...

...in the well that is my dried up faith in humanity. I really love people sometimes.
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I've been on a bit of a blog-glut recently.  There are any number of well written, clearly thought out, pointed, funny, serious, sarcastic bloggers and bloggesses (and non-cis-gender/non-gender-conforming bloggifiers) who fill the interwebz with joy, and good respectful no-nonsense commentary/advise. The sarcasm, the I-will-not-take-your-bullshit, and the ooh-look-a-pretty-nerd-thing also warm the cockles of my heart. (WTF are heart cockles, anyway? What do they look like? I heard this all the time growing up in The South [TM] and always pictured a heart with conch-like chambers.  For some reason, the chambers also laughed; this is either precious or really really creepy, depending on how I feel when I remember it.)

While I am still deeply mourning the loss of the independent blog Forever in Hell by Personal Failure, I have found a goodly number of other lovely blogs full of lovely things.  If I get my shit together, at least some of these will grace my blogroll before too long.  I've spent most of the last 2 days reading and loving Captain Awkward's advice, and *finally* looking up Feministe.  These and other blogs/general websites are an amazing resource for guidance through difficult, awkward, and/or scary social situations. These blogs and other feminist readings, a very socially progressive women's college, and some truly amazing RL people have helped with the Brill Gets A Clue About Life And Social Extrication project.

(Tangential-Sequitor: So many times especially in the extremely wallflowery days of my life I have somehow ended up in a situation where I did not like what was happening/I was embarrassed/I felt scared/confused/threatened/offended by the in-/actions of another but had NO CLUE how to extricate myself beyond fake-fainting or sudden constant screaming [not that these are *always* bad ideas].  Society - and especially the very conservative, very Christian, very Southern culture of my child-hood - does not program us womanly things very well for disagreement or assertion of the self. The attitude 'Smile, nod, shut up, and don't you dare disagree' runs rampant through my home-region, though not always through my home itself.  I've had [more than] a few awkward and embarrassing and retrospectively creep-tastic things happen because I had no script for how to deal with them. [I will ramble more at length about this later.])

This topic got waaay off of where I was going, but it means well.  Summary: I have an angry frustration with Western/American/Southern culture.  These bloggy links are good. They have helpfulness and scripts for lifeshit. Oh, and sarcasm.  Sarcasm is a beautiful, sharply faceted jewel in the marshy morass of human communication.

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In somewhat less profound and much less engaging news, for the first time ever I am in an online class (graduate-level Art History and Culture) and as such am required to keep an art blog.  This is something that I have intended to set up since... um... 2007? Well, five years isn't the worst length of procrastination I've visited upon myself. Better late than never, let there be ArtBlog, complete with images and discussions not remotely related to anything anyone outside of the class is remotely interested in, links of artistic merit, and articulate (god, I hope so, but this doesn't bode well) discussions of interesting articles.

Keeping two blogs isn't much harder than keeping one, especially when the required one is the one that involves all the thinking and the analysis and the synthesis and the reading-and-writing-coherently-about-art-theory-and/or-incredibly-esoteric-elements-of-art-theory-and-culture-on-which-I-may-in-20-years-have-enough-tenure-to-teach-a-class. Maybe. ... and the second consists primarily of my constant inner monologues.

The run-on sentence of frustration asked me to make a new paragraph, because it was tired, and the migraine ravaging the upper half of my torso says I should just wait until I can see straight enough to type without without a 1:1 typo:real word ratio.
It has a valid point.
Goodnight.
~Brill