I'm dumb, she's a lesbian

Okay this is a little bit of yesterday's news. But can we talk about how Sia just came out as a lesbian? Well, she has a girlfriend anyway. Well actually, her girlfriend basically looks like a man. So, um...

Anyway, it got me thinking about 'lesbian' music in general these days. And yes, I do realize that it is terrible of me to generalize and pigeonhole all music by lesbians into one group. But you know what? Everybody does it, so I don't really feel guilty. Hell, all the gays do it.

In the late nineties, we had the riot grrl (I believe that is the proper spelling) movement and Lilith Fair. There was Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, as well as Ani DiFranco's slightly quiter anger. However, now things have calmed down a lot, if the most prominent lesbian musicians are people like Sia and Tegan and Sara. I mean yeah, we've still got Beth Ditto around, but compared to Kathleen Hanna's (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre) early vocals, she's practically singing about sunshine and cookies.

I don't really know what I was trying to say here, but I just feel like attitudes have changed, and for the better. People don't have to be angry and confrontational, just because they're lesbian musicians. Instead they can just draw marker on their faces and dance around.

Eric and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Or, perhaps more accurately, Examples Why I'm Really Clumsy and Should Not Be Allowed Near Heavy Weights or Dangerous Chemicals

Oh yeah, this is an auspicious start to my blogging.  I was going to start with a light-hearted post about how I'm just doing this because I want to be as funny as Stin, but then there was just too much angst today for me to resist.

Now, today started pretty well.  I woke up to an adorable kitten next to my pillow and spent my first waking half-hour petting her.  Then I took a pretty nice shower and had some Go Lean.  Of course, I had to settle for cereal because my bread was covered in mold, but that's to be expected because I haven't touched it for at least a week.

Work is where it all went wrong, though.  First of all, basically all I had to do was cast an agarose gel and run it to check an RNA sample.  However, being the klutz I am, I managed to knock over the whole stock bottle of ethidium bromide (a potent carcinogen) right in front of my boss.  Oops.  Then, when i go to pour the gel, I discover that the whole apparatus isn't level and all the agarose runs over the side into the bottom of the buffer chamber.  Hopefully after all of that I didn't manage to give myself cancer.

I spent the rest of the afternoon bored and dispirited, and surfed the internet when I was supposed to be preparing for a presentation I'm giving next month.  Oh well, at least now I know which celebrities wore hideous dresses for the Oscars.

Then when 4:45 rolls around I think:  Hallelujah, I get to go to the gym.  I decide to start out with dumbbell bench presses, which was perhaps a mistake since I screwed up my elbow on Saturday morning.  However, my first set goes pretty well and then I break out the 70-pound dumbbells.  Big mistake.  I'm balancing the dumbbells on my knees when suddenly one of them slips.  Instead of letting it fall like I probably should have, I try to correct the balance, thus wrenching my elbow.  Good job.  I do a couple of sets, just enough to convince myself that if I pick up another weight today I'm not going to be able to move my right arm for days.

And of course it's snowing/raining/ooblecking outside.  My only solace is that Starbucks is on my way home.  Nothing is quite as comforting as espresso and rampant consumerism.  So I contentedly sip my grande nonfat sugar-free vanilla latte with an extra shot of espresso (the coffee choice of health-conscious gays everywhere) and somehow the world seems a little bit brighter.