Thothmuffin
Don't get any crumbs on the scale of judgement.
Saturday, March 27, 2004
My To-Do List
So CP got me started on the To-Do list, a fun little exercise where you pick the fictional characters you most want to scrump. I tried to pick characters based on their actual character concept and not illustrations or actors, but of course the visuals influence me too. Curt Wild, for instance, is mainly there because of Ewan McGregor. *leers* But then I wasn’t quite satisfied with my choices for the to-do list, because oddly enough I would have to say that I don’t want to *do* most of my favorite characters in books or movies. The characters that get me the most excited are the ones I want to be, the people I’d choose to enter into in a fictional world. Don’t get me wrong, I’d do them in a pinch, but I think our personalities might clash, and they’d wake up in the morning to find accessories missing.
My To Do List: (in no particular order)
1. Joscelin (Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy): Blond, with knives and principles.
2. Danilo Thann (Song and Sword series): Blond, with magic and a sense of humor.
3. El Mariachi (Desperado): Dark man with guns and a guitar.
4. Vallier (Lilies): Pale and crazy, with prominent bone structure.
5. Drizzt Do’Urden (R. A. Salvatore’s Dark Elf books): White-haired, with scimitars and principles.
6. Sir Integra (Hellsing): Blonde, with power and impeccable suits.
7. Kenshin (Rurouni Kenshin): Red haired, with sword and domestic skills. Now in my size.
8. Curt Wild (Velvet Goldmine): Blond, with sexy moles and a sexier voice.
9. Duncan McLeod (Highlander): An aesthete with principles, a sword, and a sense of humor.
10. Sirius Black (Harry Potter): Long black hair, ruined good looks, and imprisoned for 13 years.
My To Be List: (in no particular order)
1. Gerald Tarrant (Coldfire Trilogy): Impeccable style, the ultimate hunter, and heartlessly intelligent.
2. Artemis Entreri (R. A. Salvatore’s Dark Elf books): An assassin with an obsession.
3. Narsus (Heroic Legend of Arislan): Wit, cynicism, and strategy meet luxuriant fashion.
4. Lucius Malfoy (Harry Potter): The perfect aristocrat: cold, sneering, beautiful, and fond of affectations.
5. Severus Snape (Harry Potter): Double agent, caustic misanthrope, disciplined mind—who needs looks?
6. Hank Rearden (Atlas Shrugged): Intelligent egoist with angst about his basic human needs.
7. Nefretiri (The Ten Commandments): Rameses, Moses, and the dresses. I don't like the character, but it's possible I'm just jealous.
8. Enjouji Kei (Kizuna): The ultimate dark-haired, narrow-eyed seme.
9. Ra (Stargate): God-like power, sensuality, and androgyny—comes with fabulous accessories and a horde of lovely boys.
10. Beelzebub (Paradise Lost): There's not really a good reason for this. I just like him. It's like wanting to be Milton's Satan, only less presumptuous, and with less responsibility. But plenty of wings.
My To Do List: (in no particular order)
1. Joscelin (Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy): Blond, with knives and principles.
2. Danilo Thann (Song and Sword series): Blond, with magic and a sense of humor.
3. El Mariachi (Desperado): Dark man with guns and a guitar.
4. Vallier (Lilies): Pale and crazy, with prominent bone structure.
5. Drizzt Do’Urden (R. A. Salvatore’s Dark Elf books): White-haired, with scimitars and principles.
6. Sir Integra (Hellsing): Blonde, with power and impeccable suits.
7. Kenshin (Rurouni Kenshin): Red haired, with sword and domestic skills. Now in my size.
8. Curt Wild (Velvet Goldmine): Blond, with sexy moles and a sexier voice.
9. Duncan McLeod (Highlander): An aesthete with principles, a sword, and a sense of humor.
10. Sirius Black (Harry Potter): Long black hair, ruined good looks, and imprisoned for 13 years.
My To Be List: (in no particular order)
1. Gerald Tarrant (Coldfire Trilogy): Impeccable style, the ultimate hunter, and heartlessly intelligent.
2. Artemis Entreri (R. A. Salvatore’s Dark Elf books): An assassin with an obsession.
3. Narsus (Heroic Legend of Arislan): Wit, cynicism, and strategy meet luxuriant fashion.
4. Lucius Malfoy (Harry Potter): The perfect aristocrat: cold, sneering, beautiful, and fond of affectations.
5. Severus Snape (Harry Potter): Double agent, caustic misanthrope, disciplined mind—who needs looks?
6. Hank Rearden (Atlas Shrugged): Intelligent egoist with angst about his basic human needs.
7. Nefretiri (The Ten Commandments): Rameses, Moses, and the dresses. I don't like the character, but it's possible I'm just jealous.
8. Enjouji Kei (Kizuna): The ultimate dark-haired, narrow-eyed seme.
9. Ra (Stargate): God-like power, sensuality, and androgyny—comes with fabulous accessories and a horde of lovely boys.
10. Beelzebub (Paradise Lost): There's not really a good reason for this. I just like him. It's like wanting to be Milton's Satan, only less presumptuous, and with less responsibility. But plenty of wings.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
The Quest Begins!
My Inner Hero - Wizard!
There are many types of magic, but all require a sharp mind and a cool head. There is no puzzle I can't solve, no problem I can't think my way out of. When you feel confused or uncertain, you can always rely on me to untangle the knots and put everything back in order for you.
How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.
There are many types of magic, but all require a sharp mind and a cool head. There is no puzzle I can't solve, no problem I can't think my way out of. When you feel confused or uncertain, you can always rely on me to untangle the knots and put everything back in order for you.
How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Will that be all, m'lord?
Americans are fascinated by aristocracy. The robber-baron, the media mogul, the Southern gentleman, the starlet: all these are attempts to recreate a romanticized elite. Of course, were actual nobles still around and in power, they probably would be busily oppressing even the sort of people who managed to ape them under the auspices of this country’s freedoms. That, of course, is half their appeal.
The two most alluring components of aristocracy are privilege and bearing. Both of these aspects may be said to stem from the notion of the aristocrat as superior to those around it.
As for the first component, well, some of us have privilege, and some don’t. Some want more, and some are content. There are many ways besides nobility to get privilege, and these days, really, the aristocracy should pretty much be your last resort if it’s power you want. Privilege is not the aristocracy’s chief attraction anymore.
That leaves us with bearing. A case could be made that an aristocratic bearing stems only from the fact that the true aristocrat is constantly oozing power from all its pores & cavities. Let’s face it: having masses of people respect you enough to want to cater to your whims is going to make you look cool, regardless of your actual coolness.
But what is this “cool”? What makes an aristocrat cooler than the plump, stinking otaku who has just bought the only Clamp SS/H doujinshi ever made and informs you that, if you amuse her, she may let you touch it? (For those of you not in my fandoms: Her power is absolute, no matter how undeserving she is, and she abuses it. For those of you in my fandoms: Purely hypothetically. Stop drooling. DETENTION!! )
I will tell you the secret of this difference. An aristocrat’s bearing, sans privilege, may be distilled to these four essences:
1) Dignity
2) Egoism
3) Principles
4) Indulgence
Dignity conventionally means both “worthy of honor” and “personally reserved or composed.” It is this element that gives the aristocrat its unshakeable air, that constant sense of unruffled coolness. The true aristocrat is not given to hysteria, but neither, I argue, must it be devoid of mirth and enthusiasm (British stereotypical examples aside). Dignity in my imagining is an element of personal control. This control compels the aristocrat to react to situations consciously and in full cognizance of the proper intensity of reaction called for by the occasion. Sometimes dignity calls for restraint and sometimes for action, even wildness, but always the aristocrat must be viewed by others as a guide for appropriate behavior.
Egoism is the next necessary component, a constant awareness of the primacy of self that all aristocrats subscribe to. Some may misinterpret egoism as arrogance and selfishness, but the aristocrat knows that it alone is the power most able and likely to accomplish its own ends, and acts accordingly. Egoism also fosters great respect in aristocrats for others like themselves, and feelings ranging from contempt to pity for those who are unwilling or unable to act for themselves or their own desires, even when no one else will. Aristocrats may act for others, of course, or even act against their own interests in deference to some other principle, but always they retain the knowledge that they are subsuming something of utmost importance, and do it with, dare I say, dignity.
Indulgence is a leniency and generosity concerning pleasure that the aristocrat applies both to itself and those around it. Although indulgence at first seems a trivial matter, it gives the aristocrat the defining color that so many imitators fail to achieve. The aristocrat is always wrapped in a nimbus of satisfaction, the result of knowing what pleases it and brooking no interference in obtaining that pleasure. Often these pleasures manifest in material forms, affectations and sensualities. The true aristocrat enjoys such things precisely because it knows they are not strictly necessary. Aristocrats are also generous with the pleasure they may bring others, and revel in the ability to please those they find worthy.
Principles imply nothing more and nothing less than the fact that an aristocrat must subscribe to a code of conduct. Aristocrats are often group creatures, so this may be a shared code, but an individual with its own well-defined and rigidly upheld code of values will seem, like as not, every bit the aristocrat as well. The aristocrat places its code above the other aspects of what makes it what it is, and may even occasionally abandon other elements of its being to maintain its code.
That’s Lord Thothmuffin to you.
The two most alluring components of aristocracy are privilege and bearing. Both of these aspects may be said to stem from the notion of the aristocrat as superior to those around it.
As for the first component, well, some of us have privilege, and some don’t. Some want more, and some are content. There are many ways besides nobility to get privilege, and these days, really, the aristocracy should pretty much be your last resort if it’s power you want. Privilege is not the aristocracy’s chief attraction anymore.
That leaves us with bearing. A case could be made that an aristocratic bearing stems only from the fact that the true aristocrat is constantly oozing power from all its pores & cavities. Let’s face it: having masses of people respect you enough to want to cater to your whims is going to make you look cool, regardless of your actual coolness.
But what is this “cool”? What makes an aristocrat cooler than the plump, stinking otaku who has just bought the only Clamp SS/H doujinshi ever made and informs you that, if you amuse her, she may let you touch it? (For those of you not in my fandoms: Her power is absolute, no matter how undeserving she is, and she abuses it. For those of you in my fandoms: Purely hypothetically. Stop drooling. DETENTION!! )
I will tell you the secret of this difference. An aristocrat’s bearing, sans privilege, may be distilled to these four essences:
1) Dignity
2) Egoism
3) Principles
4) Indulgence
Dignity conventionally means both “worthy of honor” and “personally reserved or composed.” It is this element that gives the aristocrat its unshakeable air, that constant sense of unruffled coolness. The true aristocrat is not given to hysteria, but neither, I argue, must it be devoid of mirth and enthusiasm (British stereotypical examples aside). Dignity in my imagining is an element of personal control. This control compels the aristocrat to react to situations consciously and in full cognizance of the proper intensity of reaction called for by the occasion. Sometimes dignity calls for restraint and sometimes for action, even wildness, but always the aristocrat must be viewed by others as a guide for appropriate behavior.
Egoism is the next necessary component, a constant awareness of the primacy of self that all aristocrats subscribe to. Some may misinterpret egoism as arrogance and selfishness, but the aristocrat knows that it alone is the power most able and likely to accomplish its own ends, and acts accordingly. Egoism also fosters great respect in aristocrats for others like themselves, and feelings ranging from contempt to pity for those who are unwilling or unable to act for themselves or their own desires, even when no one else will. Aristocrats may act for others, of course, or even act against their own interests in deference to some other principle, but always they retain the knowledge that they are subsuming something of utmost importance, and do it with, dare I say, dignity.
Indulgence is a leniency and generosity concerning pleasure that the aristocrat applies both to itself and those around it. Although indulgence at first seems a trivial matter, it gives the aristocrat the defining color that so many imitators fail to achieve. The aristocrat is always wrapped in a nimbus of satisfaction, the result of knowing what pleases it and brooking no interference in obtaining that pleasure. Often these pleasures manifest in material forms, affectations and sensualities. The true aristocrat enjoys such things precisely because it knows they are not strictly necessary. Aristocrats are also generous with the pleasure they may bring others, and revel in the ability to please those they find worthy.
Principles imply nothing more and nothing less than the fact that an aristocrat must subscribe to a code of conduct. Aristocrats are often group creatures, so this may be a shared code, but an individual with its own well-defined and rigidly upheld code of values will seem, like as not, every bit the aristocrat as well. The aristocrat places its code above the other aspects of what makes it what it is, and may even occasionally abandon other elements of its being to maintain its code.
That’s Lord Thothmuffin to you.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
What makes it MENZU?
Let us compare two men’s products, one Japanese and one American, and see if we can’t get to the bottom of some intriguing cultural differences in how marketing and consumerism target social norms of gender.
Now, some of you might be familiar with Pocky, a Japanese snack that consists of crisp little breadsticks coated in chocolate or some other sweet substance. What you might not know is that there is Pocky, and then there is Men’s Pocky.
My Men’s Pocky (MENZU POKKII), besides exciting my masculine pride with its hunter green box, the color of gentlemen’s clubs and their exclusive and deliciously powerful male homosociality, also assures me that my new and more manly Pocky provides “the deliciousness of a cocoa with depth” (my trans.) So basically, Men’s Pocky is just dark chocolate Pocky.
It tastes so much better than that stuff they’re oppressing the women with.
Bu seriously, why is this necessary? Can dark chocolate not be sold without this sort of marketing gambit? Is normal Pocky somehow that girly? Ok, so there’s all that delicate nibbling on tiny sticks, and I’ve seen people get some wonderfully fellatory action going on with the Pocky, but I ask you, is this a problem? And more importantly, is something so simple as hunter green and the power of the word “fukami” (depth) enough to undo any social stigma, real or imagined, associated with men eating Pocky?
Maybe men will just be able to hold their head higher now as they buy Pocky, and not have to pretend it’s for their daughters anymore. But as much as I love the deepened cocoa of Men’s Pocky, I have to ask myself if the makers haven’t done a very unfortunate thing in suddenly gendering their candy. Now will women have to suffer the untold embarrassment that men previously struggled though if they wish to have a deeper experience of cocoa? Men’s Pocky is priced no differently from the normal chocolate kind, so by choosing to buy one over the other, you are selecting both a taste and an image.
I maintain that taste is more important than image! Really, ladies, you have to try it. Don’t let those smirking men, sitting around eyeing each other’s canes and cigars and long, deep, manly Pocky in their boy’s-only clubs, dictate the strength of cocoa you can handle. Are you equal, or are you equal?
Now let us jump to America, and imagine your local Thothmuffin trying to buy pomade for short hair. TM doesn’t have a lot of money, so naturally goes for the cheapest product, which comes in a sedately dark little tub and promises the relatively inoffensive odors of rosemary and mint.
The packaging neglected to mention the musky, powerful smell of raw masculine sensuality that lurked dangerously but alluringly beneath those fresh and unassuming herbs.
In this manner, I found out that in America, at least in the personal hygiene arena, cheapest=manliest. This may seem backwards at first. We might be used to thinking that expenditure of money makes the man. But prettification is a traditionally feminine past time in America, and hence where women spend the larger amounts of money, men being somehow exempt from needing the highest-end products.
This got me thinking about the commercial gendering of smells, which is really rather amazing to contemplate. The personal hygiene industry has decided what men and women are going to smell like, and smells that you take for granted as belonging to one gender, that you may even come to identify with potential mates or people you want to throw down on the salad bar and ravish in the croutons because their pheromones are just that good—these smells were bought in bottles.
You might think that a person’s smell is a part of their unique identity, even a result of their sex, but it chances are it isn’t, at least not the most noticeable parts of it. You, woman in the corner, can wear CK 1 for men, and you, boy with the deep-cocoa Pocky, can use fruit-scented Herbal Essences shampoo if you wish. Anyone ever seen those BOD/Body Fantasies commercials before movies in the theatre? If you have, you need nothing more to show you that scent is about the most gendered sense there is, and the marketers know it, and they play to it.
I don’t know enough about scent and personal body chemistry to make extended comments on this, but while it occurs to me that certain scents might actually complement the secretions of male and female bodies better, a lot of scent meaning is probably just cultural association. It’s possible that those associations have been building for thousands and thousands of years among humans and have acquired a sort of biological fixity in how we react to others. But I beg you, remember, girls are not naturally flower-scented, and dark chocolate may be consumed by anyone.
Can you smell it—the deliciousness of my depth of cocoa?
Now, some of you might be familiar with Pocky, a Japanese snack that consists of crisp little breadsticks coated in chocolate or some other sweet substance. What you might not know is that there is Pocky, and then there is Men’s Pocky.
My Men’s Pocky (MENZU POKKII), besides exciting my masculine pride with its hunter green box, the color of gentlemen’s clubs and their exclusive and deliciously powerful male homosociality, also assures me that my new and more manly Pocky provides “the deliciousness of a cocoa with depth” (my trans.) So basically, Men’s Pocky is just dark chocolate Pocky.
It tastes so much better than that stuff they’re oppressing the women with.
Bu seriously, why is this necessary? Can dark chocolate not be sold without this sort of marketing gambit? Is normal Pocky somehow that girly? Ok, so there’s all that delicate nibbling on tiny sticks, and I’ve seen people get some wonderfully fellatory action going on with the Pocky, but I ask you, is this a problem? And more importantly, is something so simple as hunter green and the power of the word “fukami” (depth) enough to undo any social stigma, real or imagined, associated with men eating Pocky?
Maybe men will just be able to hold their head higher now as they buy Pocky, and not have to pretend it’s for their daughters anymore. But as much as I love the deepened cocoa of Men’s Pocky, I have to ask myself if the makers haven’t done a very unfortunate thing in suddenly gendering their candy. Now will women have to suffer the untold embarrassment that men previously struggled though if they wish to have a deeper experience of cocoa? Men’s Pocky is priced no differently from the normal chocolate kind, so by choosing to buy one over the other, you are selecting both a taste and an image.
I maintain that taste is more important than image! Really, ladies, you have to try it. Don’t let those smirking men, sitting around eyeing each other’s canes and cigars and long, deep, manly Pocky in their boy’s-only clubs, dictate the strength of cocoa you can handle. Are you equal, or are you equal?
Now let us jump to America, and imagine your local Thothmuffin trying to buy pomade for short hair. TM doesn’t have a lot of money, so naturally goes for the cheapest product, which comes in a sedately dark little tub and promises the relatively inoffensive odors of rosemary and mint.
The packaging neglected to mention the musky, powerful smell of raw masculine sensuality that lurked dangerously but alluringly beneath those fresh and unassuming herbs.
In this manner, I found out that in America, at least in the personal hygiene arena, cheapest=manliest. This may seem backwards at first. We might be used to thinking that expenditure of money makes the man. But prettification is a traditionally feminine past time in America, and hence where women spend the larger amounts of money, men being somehow exempt from needing the highest-end products.
This got me thinking about the commercial gendering of smells, which is really rather amazing to contemplate. The personal hygiene industry has decided what men and women are going to smell like, and smells that you take for granted as belonging to one gender, that you may even come to identify with potential mates or people you want to throw down on the salad bar and ravish in the croutons because their pheromones are just that good—these smells were bought in bottles.
You might think that a person’s smell is a part of their unique identity, even a result of their sex, but it chances are it isn’t, at least not the most noticeable parts of it. You, woman in the corner, can wear CK 1 for men, and you, boy with the deep-cocoa Pocky, can use fruit-scented Herbal Essences shampoo if you wish. Anyone ever seen those BOD/Body Fantasies commercials before movies in the theatre? If you have, you need nothing more to show you that scent is about the most gendered sense there is, and the marketers know it, and they play to it.
I don’t know enough about scent and personal body chemistry to make extended comments on this, but while it occurs to me that certain scents might actually complement the secretions of male and female bodies better, a lot of scent meaning is probably just cultural association. It’s possible that those associations have been building for thousands and thousands of years among humans and have acquired a sort of biological fixity in how we react to others. But I beg you, remember, girls are not naturally flower-scented, and dark chocolate may be consumed by anyone.
Can you smell it—the deliciousness of my depth of cocoa?
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Plumbing the Depths
TM: so...how’s your thesis?
TM: because I was going to resort to begging and emotional blackmail...
TM: the last dregs of my love & energy are slowly being sucked away by my Milton paper
TM: leaving nothing but the dry maria of cosmically ancient tears behind them!
TM: it's good to see that the Well of Hyperbole is apparently depthless, though
You are Severus Snape, a superbly sarcastic, somewhat evil wizard. A former Death Eater, you have found your true calling in making the Weasley twins' lives hell. [edited by the Potions Master]
Which Cool Evil Guy Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
TM: because I was going to resort to begging and emotional blackmail...
TM: the last dregs of my love & energy are slowly being sucked away by my Milton paper
TM: leaving nothing but the dry maria of cosmically ancient tears behind them!
TM: it's good to see that the Well of Hyperbole is apparently depthless, though
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Ok, fine, but we're going to have to redesign the DE tattoo
You are Severus Snape, a superbly sarcastic, somewhat evil wizard. A former Death Eater, you have found your true calling in making the Weasley twins' lives hell. [edited by the Potions Master]
Which Cool Evil Guy Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Ways to say “I Love You” in Japanese
1) Say nothing
2) Comment on the beauty of the surroundings (moon, sakura, etc.)
3) Effusively compliment your loved one’s least attractive feature
4) “Shinde mo ii”: (I love you so much that) I wouldn’t mind if I died right now.
These strategies are highly effective in Japanese. But allow us, for a moment, to consider their application in an English context:
A: . . .
B: Are you even listening to me?
A: I’m sorry but. . . I was looking at the moon. . .tonight, it’s just so. . .
B: I’d prefer it if you looked at me, actually.
A: Ah. . .that’s. . .
B: What?
A: Your facial moles. . .the hairs that swirl so delicately from them are. . .
B: Don’t look at my moles! You know I hate them!
A: Ah! I’m so sorry! There’s no excuse. . .
B: You know, at this point, I’d rather be dead than on this date.
A: Me too. . .I could just die. . .
2) Comment on the beauty of the surroundings (moon, sakura, etc.)
3) Effusively compliment your loved one’s least attractive feature
4) “Shinde mo ii”: (I love you so much that) I wouldn’t mind if I died right now.
These strategies are highly effective in Japanese. But allow us, for a moment, to consider their application in an English context:
A: . . .
B: Are you even listening to me?
A: I’m sorry but. . . I was looking at the moon. . .tonight, it’s just so. . .
B: I’d prefer it if you looked at me, actually.
A: Ah. . .that’s. . .
B: What?
A: Your facial moles. . .the hairs that swirl so delicately from them are. . .
B: Don’t look at my moles! You know I hate them!
A: Ah! I’m so sorry! There’s no excuse. . .
B: You know, at this point, I’d rather be dead than on this date.
A: Me too. . .I could just die. . .
