(no subject)
Happy Lucia, everyone!
For those of you new to this journal and not Scandinavian, Lucia was a Sicilian saint or a brave medieval girl from Värmland, Sweden, depending on who you ask. In either case, it means that every December 13, young people of both sexes put on white dresse in the early morning. One girl gets to wear a crown of candles (which, along with the customary red sash around the waist, makes her look rather like dead mommy Winchester), the rest of the girls have tinsel in their hair instead. The boys get silly cone hats and fairy wands, which makes them look like a cross between a wizard and a Klan meeting, but they're really harmless. Sometimes there are elves and gingerbread people as well.
Once they're dressed, they all go singing to their family and friends. Within the home, it's often customary that they bring coffee, gingerbread, and saffron buns. In schools, there's just the singing.
Sometimes it's adorably cute (as was the case when the kids at my school did it today), sometimes it's serene and beautiful, and sometimes it's downright creepy, with the whole thing turning into a beauty/popularity contest about Who Gets To Be Lucia.
There's also a national Lucia contest, won by whoever looks the most like Barbie and can also sing.
December 12 is "Lussevaka" (Lucia Wake) and like most other Swedish holiday eves, it's an excuse for teens to go out and get as drunk as is humanly possible.
***
Now that I'm done with that little lecture, I continue my didacticism with a little note about an issue recent events brought to mind:
People used to complain that a "friends list" didn't separate between people you wanted to read and people you wanted reading you, or that you might want to read certain posts by someone and not others, etc. LJs solution to that was creating filters.
I have a filter called "default view". Those are the people who show up when I read my friends list. Everyone else are people who I want to keep in touch with, who can read my locked posts if they like (not that I have many), but who I don't really want to read every day. I think of them as bookmarked LJs, pretty much.
Quite often, if they make a post, I won't see it.
Since the people actually on my default view filter, communities and feeds included, make about 150-200 posts a day (and then there are all the metafandom links), I don't exactly read all of those posts either. I skim, looking for words/phrases that seem interesting. If I've been away from computers more than a couple of days, I won't even do that.
In other words, unless I have specifically commented on your post, don't assume I've read it. And if you plan on doing something that requires the permission of your friends list, make it opt-in, rather than opt-out. "Silence is agreement" only works if you can be sure everyone has heard what you're saying.
***
On a completely different note, I tried reading a book yesterday (I believe the English title is "Row the Boat Ashore"), but I had to stop. The story was about a high school girl who falls in love with a guy who uses a wheelchair, and through the part I read, she went on and on about how she couldn't believe that this guy was a cripple, he was so hot, and how perfectly awful, but sometimes she almost forgot, and yada yada yada.
The final straw came when she told her parents about him and her mother complimented her on how brave she was for making friends with a boy in a wheelchair.
I didn't throw the book into the wall, but I came pretty damned close. Sure, it was obvious these were attitudes meant to be corrected at the end of the book, but there's only so much idiotic bigotry I can take.
(It reminded me - though the book was way worse - of the people who claim I'm such a good person for doing companion work. First, I don't do it out of the goodness of my heart. I get paid. Second, it's a fairly fun job most of the time. Certainly more fun than being a mailman or a cleaner, and I've never heard anyone compliment them for their selfless sacrifice.)
To make the story even more annoying, it was Christian in a very American way. I can't quite explain what's different between American and Swedish ways of being Christian, except maybe to say that a preachy moment in a Swedish Christian children's book is more in the line of, "Why should I have to go to church to meet God? Can't I just meet him in nature, his glorious work?" "If the pizza baker invited you home, would you insist on meeting him in the pizzeria? Or the shop keeper in his shop? It's his house!" (Actual example.)
This was... well, it tried to be sneaky, but it wasn't, really. The real "stop being on my side, you make my side seem stupid" came when an adult who is clearly a role model in the book was asked if he believed in Hell, and said that he knew Hell existed, because otherwise following Christ would be meaningless.
It pissed me off on two levels. First, because if Christ's teachings requires Hell to exist, that doesn't in any way prove that Hell does exist. An alternative and equally valid interpretation is that Christ's teachings are false.
Second, that type of "I'm a Christian because otherwise I'd burn in hellfire" anti-morality pisses me off. How about following Christ's teachings because they're actually pretty nifty teachings to follow? Even if there's no hell beyond the gruesome things humans to to themselves, each other, and every living creature. Christ isn't supposed to be some fucking sadistic "follow me or else" psycho.
(Incidentally, there was a discussion about religion and slash today where someone assumed that if homosexuality = sin, then also homosexuality = hellfire. Now, while I don't think homosexuality is a sin - obviously, or I wouldn't be shagging women - I think there are plenty of reasons to avoid sin beyond not going to hell. Such as it being quite a good thing to stay away from stuff that harms yourself, the world around you, and/or your relationship with God.)
Naturally enough, this annoying book also had extremely flat characterisation, and most interactions made me cringe.
I don't think I'll finish reading it, no. Then again, I can be frightfully masochist sometimes.
***
Speaking about things that annoy me, the weekend club leaders had a meeting yesterday to determine what we're to do next term. (It's not the easiest thing, finding ten weekend activities that suits the mentally retarded and the leaders. Ten times of MacDonalds and/or dance bands isn't exactly an idea that appeals to us.)
I checked my calendar and pointed out that one of the earliest dates was Muslim New Years, and we could always celebrate that.
Now, it was pretty much a joke, in part because I don't know how to celebrate Muslim New Years and in part because I think it would kind of be appropriation anyway, since the weekend club doesn't have any Muslims in it.
Still, I didn't expect the kind of jokes I got in return. "What? Everyone shows up in a burkha?" and "We could make two cakes that look like towers and have a toy plane fly into them."
I didn't say anything, and I still can't decide if I should have or not, but I sure as hell felt very WTF. I'm all in favor of making jokes about religion, even (or maybe especially) crass jokes, but I can't even fathom the mind that goes straight from "Muslim New Years" to burkhas and WTC.
For those of you new to this journal and not Scandinavian, Lucia was a Sicilian saint or a brave medieval girl from Värmland, Sweden, depending on who you ask. In either case, it means that every December 13, young people of both sexes put on white dresse in the early morning. One girl gets to wear a crown of candles (which, along with the customary red sash around the waist, makes her look rather like dead mommy Winchester), the rest of the girls have tinsel in their hair instead. The boys get silly cone hats and fairy wands, which makes them look like a cross between a wizard and a Klan meeting, but they're really harmless. Sometimes there are elves and gingerbread people as well.
Once they're dressed, they all go singing to their family and friends. Within the home, it's often customary that they bring coffee, gingerbread, and saffron buns. In schools, there's just the singing.
Sometimes it's adorably cute (as was the case when the kids at my school did it today), sometimes it's serene and beautiful, and sometimes it's downright creepy, with the whole thing turning into a beauty/popularity contest about Who Gets To Be Lucia.
There's also a national Lucia contest, won by whoever looks the most like Barbie and can also sing.
December 12 is "Lussevaka" (Lucia Wake) and like most other Swedish holiday eves, it's an excuse for teens to go out and get as drunk as is humanly possible.
***
Now that I'm done with that little lecture, I continue my didacticism with a little note about an issue recent events brought to mind:
People used to complain that a "friends list" didn't separate between people you wanted to read and people you wanted reading you, or that you might want to read certain posts by someone and not others, etc. LJs solution to that was creating filters.
I have a filter called "default view". Those are the people who show up when I read my friends list. Everyone else are people who I want to keep in touch with, who can read my locked posts if they like (not that I have many), but who I don't really want to read every day. I think of them as bookmarked LJs, pretty much.
Quite often, if they make a post, I won't see it.
Since the people actually on my default view filter, communities and feeds included, make about 150-200 posts a day (and then there are all the metafandom links), I don't exactly read all of those posts either. I skim, looking for words/phrases that seem interesting. If I've been away from computers more than a couple of days, I won't even do that.
In other words, unless I have specifically commented on your post, don't assume I've read it. And if you plan on doing something that requires the permission of your friends list, make it opt-in, rather than opt-out. "Silence is agreement" only works if you can be sure everyone has heard what you're saying.
***
On a completely different note, I tried reading a book yesterday (I believe the English title is "Row the Boat Ashore"), but I had to stop. The story was about a high school girl who falls in love with a guy who uses a wheelchair, and through the part I read, she went on and on about how she couldn't believe that this guy was a cripple, he was so hot, and how perfectly awful, but sometimes she almost forgot, and yada yada yada.
The final straw came when she told her parents about him and her mother complimented her on how brave she was for making friends with a boy in a wheelchair.
I didn't throw the book into the wall, but I came pretty damned close. Sure, it was obvious these were attitudes meant to be corrected at the end of the book, but there's only so much idiotic bigotry I can take.
(It reminded me - though the book was way worse - of the people who claim I'm such a good person for doing companion work. First, I don't do it out of the goodness of my heart. I get paid. Second, it's a fairly fun job most of the time. Certainly more fun than being a mailman or a cleaner, and I've never heard anyone compliment them for their selfless sacrifice.)
To make the story even more annoying, it was Christian in a very American way. I can't quite explain what's different between American and Swedish ways of being Christian, except maybe to say that a preachy moment in a Swedish Christian children's book is more in the line of, "Why should I have to go to church to meet God? Can't I just meet him in nature, his glorious work?" "If the pizza baker invited you home, would you insist on meeting him in the pizzeria? Or the shop keeper in his shop? It's his house!" (Actual example.)
This was... well, it tried to be sneaky, but it wasn't, really. The real "stop being on my side, you make my side seem stupid" came when an adult who is clearly a role model in the book was asked if he believed in Hell, and said that he knew Hell existed, because otherwise following Christ would be meaningless.
It pissed me off on two levels. First, because if Christ's teachings requires Hell to exist, that doesn't in any way prove that Hell does exist. An alternative and equally valid interpretation is that Christ's teachings are false.
Second, that type of "I'm a Christian because otherwise I'd burn in hellfire" anti-morality pisses me off. How about following Christ's teachings because they're actually pretty nifty teachings to follow? Even if there's no hell beyond the gruesome things humans to to themselves, each other, and every living creature. Christ isn't supposed to be some fucking sadistic "follow me or else" psycho.
(Incidentally, there was a discussion about religion and slash today where someone assumed that if homosexuality = sin, then also homosexuality = hellfire. Now, while I don't think homosexuality is a sin - obviously, or I wouldn't be shagging women - I think there are plenty of reasons to avoid sin beyond not going to hell. Such as it being quite a good thing to stay away from stuff that harms yourself, the world around you, and/or your relationship with God.)
Naturally enough, this annoying book also had extremely flat characterisation, and most interactions made me cringe.
I don't think I'll finish reading it, no. Then again, I can be frightfully masochist sometimes.
***
Speaking about things that annoy me, the weekend club leaders had a meeting yesterday to determine what we're to do next term. (It's not the easiest thing, finding ten weekend activities that suits the mentally retarded and the leaders. Ten times of MacDonalds and/or dance bands isn't exactly an idea that appeals to us.)
I checked my calendar and pointed out that one of the earliest dates was Muslim New Years, and we could always celebrate that.
Now, it was pretty much a joke, in part because I don't know how to celebrate Muslim New Years and in part because I think it would kind of be appropriation anyway, since the weekend club doesn't have any Muslims in it.
Still, I didn't expect the kind of jokes I got in return. "What? Everyone shows up in a burkha?" and "We could make two cakes that look like towers and have a toy plane fly into them."
I didn't say anything, and I still can't decide if I should have or not, but I sure as hell felt very WTF. I'm all in favor of making jokes about religion, even (or maybe especially) crass jokes, but I can't even fathom the mind that goes straight from "Muslim New Years" to burkhas and WTC.