A while ago, Miz Moffat wrote a blog post in which she recounted the celebrity crushes of her youth and how they signified a future queer existence.

I didn’t comment, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this.

I didn’t comment not because I didn’t recognize my young queer self, but because the women to whom I was (and am) attracted are never celebrities: They are simply not visible in pop culture. The butch/genderqueer individuals who make my heart beat faster could not be found on the television screen or in films or even on stage. As I got older and into punk rock, there was some visibility, but before that? Nothing.

In fact, I think this is one of the reasons why I dated men for so long, despite knowing that I was queer: It was difficult to follow through on my hypothetical queerness when I was not attracted to Angelina Jolie or Lucy Lawless or Ani DiFranco or whomever else I heard the gay girls were into. I like ‘em butchy, and that’s a tall order for a young person.

Luckily, I was growing up mostly in Toronto, which is how I knew that I wasn’t straight: Even though the women I liked were rarely on teevee, I frequently saw them walking down the street, working in all sorts of professions, and generally being present. They were always older than me, and looked better in men’s clothing than any boy my age, and I’d see them and think, WOW.

Them I’d go back to fucking my boyfriend or whatever, trying not to dwell on the thoughts and feelings that had been brought up by the encounter.

I’m not saying it was harder than what was experienced by my peers who prefer femmes, just… Different.

I didn’t really recognize myself in a queer community until I was 17 years old and read Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, which is a history of the lesbian culture in Buffalo, NY, in the 1930s-60s. It was a big moment for me, because though the butch/femme roles were presented as a coping mechanism in a homophobic society, I still saw myself validated. Not necessarily as a femme, which is a moniker that I’ve only come to adopt in the past year or so, but definitely as an appreciator of masculine women.

Soon after, I read Rubyfruit Jungle for the first time, and that didn’t help my confusion: The protagonist frequently expresses much distain for her female lovers who maintain their relationships with boyfriends for the sake of appearances, and I wondered, Am I doing that?

I spent a lot if time feeling bad, especially when I was single and secretly in love with a (non-butchy but out queer) friend. I don’t regret the way things went, but of course it’s always easier to see these things in retrospect: It made sense for me to be too scared to come out.

So my celebrity crushes? Well, the closest thing I can think of is when I was slightly obsessed with Amelia Earhart, at the age of 13. Mae Callen summarized the appeal quite well in her tributes, here and here. At the time, I was reading biographies constantly, looking for heroes, which meant that my love for AE had the main hallmarks of my future celeb crushes: I didn’t want to get with her so much as I wanted to BE her. Other people in this category include Diana Rigg in the 1965-68 seasons of the Avengers, and Pam Grier.

Other than that, I can’t say that pop culture has much room for the folks whom I consider to be crush-worthy. That’s a shame, because I know I’m not the only one who finds them to be sexy as all get out. But really, their invisibility is only a facet of the homophobia and strict gender rules that curtail so much of our lives: It’s another side of the same story in which I’m told I don’t look gay. The nature of celebrity reinforces ideas of who we should be, what we should look like, who we should love, and what our standards should be for beauty, of which gender is an extension. In a way, this is part of my attraction to butches/gendequeers: By simply existing and looking jaw-droppingly dapper in her grey wool suit, my lover is a walking/talking/thinking/feeling act of resistance, and I am dead proud to hold her hand as we walk down the street. She’s more crushable to me than any celebrity ever could be.

With huge thanks to Miz Moffat for getting me thinking!

***UPDATE:  All blogs are now showing up as properly updated!!!  YAY!  But I’d still like your input…

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My suspicion is that our success is becoming our downfall:  The Queer Canada Blogs blogroll now lists 217 blogs, but some of them are not getting bumped to the top of the list when they are updated.  As one of the troubled blogs in question is that of my lover, and another is a favourite of mine (Rigo’s Open Letter!), I’m quite put out that things are not working as they should.

Is the problem simply that we have too many blogs for Blogger’s Blog List gadget?  Or is it just buggy in general?

I’m now trying out the Link List gadget, instead of the Blog List.

I’ve also copied most of the blogs over into BlogRolling, but I don’t think that link can be ordered by most recently updated (the option is there, but apparently not functioning?), which makes it rather unappealing for QCB.

We have a WordPress version of the blogroll, but the WP blogroll (Links) widgets aren’t great so that doesn’t seem to be an option.

Does anyone have any advice on how we could make the QCB blogroll more functional, ie. with some sort of hosted blogroll site, or a thirdparty gadget/widget that we could plug into the Blogger or WordPress versions of the site?

Mae and I would like the project to eventually have its own URL, along with all sorts of nice stuff such as blogs sorted by category, blogger profiles, maybe a queer bloggers forum, and how-tos for wannabe bloggers.  I don’t think the timing is right for that right now, given how stretched thin she and I both are in terms of our other commitments*, but I’m interested to know if any readers have thoughts on how that could work.

Thanks in advance for your contributions!

*In my case, to the point where I’ve neglected replying to recent comments on this blog… I’m sorry!  I’ll get there soon! Please don’t give up on me!

Today I got my hands covered in grease, which pleased me immensely.  I love the school assignments for which I need to make something, even if it’s something that I’ll never use in the real word.  Case in point:  A piece of sheet metal with different size holes in it, corresponding to common sizes of wire conduit.  It’s near useless, particularly because the edges are sharp, but I had a good time making it.  I had to use a manual knock out punch for the four corner holes, and a hydraulic KO punch for the ones in between.  It felt like arts and crafts, albeit with slimy cutting oil and spirals of razor sharp steel.

For another assignment this morning, I took a handful of different sized wires, slipped a section of shrinkable plastic around them, and used a heatgun to secure the bundle into a neat cable.

These are the days when I love school.

Nomination are currently open for the 2009 Canadian Blog Awards and will close on Saturday, November 21st.

As you may know, the Queer Canada Blogs blogroll is choc full of excellent blogs written by talented bloggers… Now is you chance to show a blogger how much you appreciate their hard work, by entering their name into the running for an award!

Suggested categories include:
- GLBT (Obviously! Though I’m not sure where this puts those of us who identify as queer…)
- Overall
- Blog Post
- Blog Post Series
- Personal
- Family
- Photo/Art
- Humour
- Political

…And these are just the ones for which I’m nominating my favourite blogs!

Check out the full categories listing and fill out the nomination form at the CBA website.

We’re here, we’re queer, we’re taking over teh internets…

i joined f@cebook today, after many years of resistance.  i gave in because i never know about any of the parties or bike rides or even the protests anymore, because i’m in school all the time and no one talks about these things face to face like they used to.  (let alone the old promo techniques from my anarcho-punk-activisty days in toronto… phone trees?  handbills? wheat-paste postering expeditions? what are those?!!)

le sigh: the end of an era.

my original objection to the whole thing was the idea that some corporation would know who my friends are.  then, once my paranoia settled down into the dull background roar that accompanies my everyday life like a really bad musical score, i decided that i just don’t have time for it.  my anonymous pseudonym online life (this one!) has become so very very rich and connected that i didn’t want anything else competing with it:  certainly not friend requests from the kids who bullied me in elementary school, and *definitely* nothing from the ones i went on to bully in high school (bullying creates bullies, let this be a leason to you!).

but i *do* want to get involved with planning the annual anniversary party for the local community bike shop, and i want to know about the potlucks and dance-a-thons and late night bike rides and all the other things that are happening with my friends, and it looks like this is the means to that end.  not participating was not getting me anywhere.

so here i am:  connecting, socially, online, with people who know my face and my real name and where i live.  it still weirds me out, but i’m trying not to think about it too hard.

aside from the fact that he was unbearable cute, one of the reasons why mo was such an appealing puppy for oats and i was the fact that he’s not likely to grow to be much larger than 30 lbs.  that, combined with his young malleable mind, made him an ideal candidate to be groomed for our lifestyle:  we needed a dog who could be trained to enjoy life as seen from a bike trailer on long journeys, because we have planned many of them for the upcoming years and would hate to leave him behind.  besides which, it’d make our grocery runs a lot easier.

i have a big bike trailer made of hard plastic that is quite good for hauling stuff, but not so excellent for small puppies.  luckily, oats found a metal-framed tent-style one for only $35 on cr@igslist, and it even folds away for easy storage.  this afternoon was the first bit of mo-meet-trailer training:  we got him an especially yummy/revolting bone, parked the trailer in the corner of the kitchen, propped it up to that it would be sturdy, and tucked inside his favourite blanket.  as you can see from the photo, the experiment was a success… not only did the bone keep mo quietly playing for upwards of an hour, but after that he decided that the trailer would be an excellent spot for a nap.

a few more days of this, and we’ll try it outside… and then on the road, biking off into the sunset on crazy adventures together.

It began to rain as I biked to school this morning. When I turned onto the road that takes me out of the city towards the rural-urban fringe where the trades campus is located, the sunlight that had shone earlier in the morning gave one last hurrah: A rainbow appeared across the sky ahead of me, with one end seeming to point to the college. Ha! I thought to myself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned these past months, it’s that rainbows are not particularly welcome around here, at least not the kind that celebrate sexual and gender diversity.

Of course, I’m more likely to wave a black flag than a rainbow one, but still. The point remains.

Then I was thinking of the other meaning of the rainbow: There’s a pot of gold at the end, right? Which I suppose is really a more accurate reading of this sign, if I want to take it as one.

For the first time in my life, I’m developing a career. When I was younger, jobs were only for the purpose of paying rent and careers were for sell-outs bowing down to the man. When I was a university student, and then afterwards when I worked at a research institute, concepts and critical analysis were what mattered, and jobs depended on who I could impress and what grants they could secure. All of my previous ideas for my financial future were either unsustainable or impractical: Silkscreening instructor, website manager, stained glass artisan, bike mechanic, graphic designer, radio show host…

I don’t mean that these aren’t great possibilities for some folks, but given my skills and my personality, none of them were logical choices unless I was going to simultaneously invest a whole lot of energy into expanding my knowledge. Which I wasn’t: I wanted them to just happen.

Even the idea of becoming a university professor: I think I’d be a rad prof, but you know what? I hate writing academic papers. Loathe it, in fact. Producing my honours thesis was a horrid experience, one that I’d question repeating. So really, while a return to academia is on my to-do list, it’s waaaaaaaay down at the bottom, after “have kids” and “bike across canada” and even “learn to speak Irish”. Why on earth was I considering making a living as an academic?!!!

Which is a long way of saying that even when trade school hasn’t been welcoming and I’ve felt frustrated by the way things are organized around here, I’m very happy to be on my way to being an electrician. Being qualified in a trade excites me, because I’ll be useful for both my problem-solving ability and my dexterity, and for the most part will be able to depend on making a steady living wage based upon those skills.

Also, I’m rather good at it: I am proud to report that I just scored 98% on an exam regarding calculating ampacities for different conductor applications.

I left my desk for a brief jaunt about campus, to grab a coffee at the diner and a new pad of graph paper at the bookstore.  The bookstore is having a fundraiser sale of donated books, which I checked out on my way to the stationary section.  It was mostly thriller paperbacks and some crappy self-help stuff, but I did manage to pick up a novel by one of my favourite authors, and it’s even one I’ve yet to read:  Peter Duck by Arthur Ransome.

I suppose this book is considered a child’s story, one of many in Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series. However, I missed out on this collection when I was a kid, and only got into it a few years ago, at which point I was promptly hooked.

The main characters are a group of (wealthy, white, able-bodied) British children in the 1930s who live the stereotypical life associated with fictional kids in that context:  The majority of their year is spent at assorted boarding schools, but they come together in England’s Lake District for the summer (and sometimes winter) holidays.  Think of the Narnia books (or maybe Enid Blyton?  I’ve only read a few, so am not sure), except that these children are very obsessed with boats and all things nautical.  With a host of parents/guardians who are either delightfully permissive or deliciously absent, the friends and siblings that make up the gangs of Swallows and Amazons lead a life of wholesome adventure with the occasional real danger thrown in for good measure.

In today’s parlance, these kids would be nerds:  They’re always pursuing some new avenue of interest, from books or convenient adults, usually related to nature, do-it-yourself, and bits of technology that are no longer current and yet still charmingly interesting.  Seriously, the novel Pigeon Post had me all dreaming of raising carrier pigeons, and at least half of my knowledge of sailing terminology and techniques comes from these books.

What makes Ransome’s books so worthwhile? For me, aside from the nerd factor, it’s the female characters:  The young women in these novels are strong and adventurous and busy doing millions of things that go far beyond the typical care-taking role often given to similar protagonists. Every volume passes the Bechdel test with flying colours, which I feel is especially relevant in books meant for young readers.

What else can I say?  Well, it seems that Peter Duck involves a sailing voyage to the Caribbean, and given the era of the novel, I’m guessing that there’s going to be some fucked-up racial stuff in store for my reading (dis)pleasure.  But hey, maybe somehow that won’t happen!  I can only hope.

As a final note, I just want to tell you that my very favourite Arthur Ransome novel is We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea, in which the children find themselves sailing unsupervised across the Channel.  They rescue a kitten from a shipwreck!  ZOMG!  It’s amazing!

Also, I recommend The Far-Distant Oxus, which is a novel not by Arthur Ransome but rather two young Swallows and Amazons fans who wrote it while they themselves were attending boarding school.  Unfortunately, it has a whole load of crazy Persia-fixated orientalism that I find to be quite gag-worthy and renders the novel unsuitable for unaccompanied minors.  However, this could be used as a great way of opening discussions about culture/ethnicity/etc with kids, and it definitely gave me a lot to the think about from a critical standpoint, in terms of how two young British women saw themselves in the colonial context of the mid-1930s.  Yes, this is yet another thesis topic, to add to my ever-growing collection.

Finally:  Someday I will get a tattoo of the Swallows and Amazons logo, because it is just so damn cool.

Here it is, folks, my official strategy for success at NaBloPoMo 2009:

When in doubt, write about food.

That’s it, but oh, what a difference it makes!  Last year I had no strategy, no plan, no drafts folder, no ace up my sleeve for those crappy days when bike rides were more appealing than blogging, and frankly, it showed:  I managed 19 posts in 30 days, and that was a struggle.

But this time around, I’m determined to do the full month, and here is how: Though I am full of opinions about many many (many!) things, food is probably the biggest issue that gets me all riled up. So, be ready for the onslaught of recipes and rants, because it’s coming.

What about you? Are you winging it, or is there a method to your madness?

(Cross-posted to the QCB discussion forum at the NaBloPoMo site, because I’m devious like that)

lokum, aka turkish delight, served after this year's thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house in toronto

i made green green tomato and ginger jam, and am rather undecided about it:  on one hand, it’s nicely jam-like with a good bit of sweetness and some pep from the ginger, but then it’s also got that floral green tomato flavour that is a little unusual and unexpected.

i think the problem is that i’m not sure if i like my green tomatoes to be sweet, though i certainly love green tomatoes in spicy salsas and chutney.  i look at the jam and i expect it to taste differently than it does, which i realize really isn’t fair:  those green tomatoes are trying their damnedest to be delicious, and i oughta appreciate their work.

at any rate, maybe you already know you like green tomato jam, or have enough green tomatoes kicking around that you don’t mind risking some on this project:  my recipe is below, based on a few other versions from various websites and cookbooks.

feral geographer’s green tomato and ginger jam

yields ~ 10 cups

4.5 lbs hard green tomatoes, cored and diced
3 cups sugar (i used brown)
1/2 cup candied ginger, minced
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 tsp pomona universal pectin powder
2 tsp pomona calcium water (comes with pectin)

• combine the tomatoes, 2 cups of the sugar, and the ginger in a large bowl, and let sit in the fridge overnight.
• the next day, put the mixture into a large saucepan and add the lemon juice and calcium water.
• bring to boil, stirring frequently.
• in a small bowl, combine the remaining 1 cup of sugar with the pectin powder.
• add the sugar and pectin mixture to the tomato mixture, and stir well.
• return to boil, stirring frequently, then remove from heat.
• ladle into hot sterilized jars and seal as per standard canning procedures, and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes

a few notes:

i happened to have a bunch of candied ginger laying around, so that’s why i used it.  if you wanted to experiment, try using smaller amounts of the fresh stuff, or even some powdered root.

ditto, the sugar: brown is all i had, but others would be fine too.  honey could add a nice dimension!

likewise, i used the pomona because i had it on hand, and i don’t like long-cooked jams because i find they all get a similar cooked-sugar taste to them.  leave out the pectin entirely if you don’t mind a runny product, or if you don’t mind simmering the jam until it thickens to your liking.

some of the recipes recommended seeding the tomatoes, but i like the look of the seeds and really couldn’t be bothered.

yum, jam on toast!