(no subject)

Your Score: Televangelist

You are 42% Rational, 100% Extroverted, 42% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant.

As the Lord as my witness, I swear upon the good book that you are indeed the TELEVANGELIST! Characterized by extreme arrogance, self-assurance, and extroversion, you would make a very charismatic leader (though not a very good one). On top of that, you are also more intuitive than rational, predisposing you to a more spiritual or emotional outlook on life. Thus, you are thoroughly irrational, and you tend to think that sound logical reasoning is overrated, and that it is much better to trust your gut instincts--which must be pretty big instincts, considering the size of your gut. You also tend to be rather gentle and considerate of others' feelings. Clearly, you would make the perfect televangelist. You could easily fleece people of their money and their dignity like so many sheep. Emotional, extroverted, arrogant, and gentle, you annoy the hell out of people who have to listen to the feel-good, intuitive shit spewing from your mouth. Not only that, but people may look down on you as a self-centered asshat. So while you are gentle and genuinely care about others, it is quite clear that you still care about yourself MORE. Why is your personality flawed? Because you are too damned extroverted, emotional, and arrogant. So preach your irrational message, brotha-man! I assure you, no one will be listening. Except for a few bums. But they just want you to feed them crackers and wine.

( To put it less negatively: )

Just to forewarn you: Jen and I put the lj-cuts in ourselves. It won't do it on its own.

(no subject)

Shortbus is a good movie. Wow. And it had far less actual sex than I thought it did. *lol*

And despite the fact that it isn't meant to be arousing, it kinda was, but I expected that.

There's this scene where the main character (Sophia) is looking into an orgy room, and a woman has an orgasm during partner sex and then turns and looks at Sophia. I saw the behind-the-scene stuff...that scene had sound put over it, and they knew it would, so people are talking (and moaning!) and you can hear the direction, right? The director (the same guy who did Hedwig and the Angry Inch) tells the woman to act out an orgasm and then look at Sophia, yeah? She replies, "Gimme a bit and I can have a real one," and then she does. For some reason, I think that's the most amazing thing--a real orgasm in a film! But then, maybe I'm jaded by bad porn?

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On a completely unrelated note, I'm reading a book called AfterShock, by Pattrice Jones. It's about trauma, specifically the kind that activists run into. She talks about a lot of kinds of trauma--not just getting beat up by cops etc., but also how to deal with being an activist when it seems hopeless, or how to deal with how depressing the whole damn world is (see jenhowell's recent posts if you don't know what I mean).

I'm not far into it, but wow, I'm really impressed. I'm not a huge writer-in-books, but I find myself constantly underlining and/or marking bits that I find really interesting. In an opening section discussing how feelings and thoughts are connected to our physical bodies, she goes into a discussion of shame, and I read this: "Having just one other person hear what you have experienced while still offering you empathy and positive regard can help to send stubborn shame away." And isn't that the fucking truth. I sometimes wonder why I have the urge to say things that I'm embarrassed or ashamed by, in my livejournal. Why do I get so personal? Why do I have the urge to share those things? And I think that's why. Having my friends reply, "Oh, that sucks" or "I understand" or "*hugs*", that lightens how awful I might be feeling.

In another section Pattrice Jones talks about sadness, and how it's caused by loss of some kind. "Some of us do everything we can to avoid what feels like might be unbearable sorrow. Others hang onto sadness as a way of keeping what was lost." Oh man, I have done both.

In terms of trauma, she noted that traumatic experiences are literally stored in a different part of our brain than our other memories, or language. And when you talk about traumatic things, they move into the rest of your memories (they did brain scans of people to find this out). So when you process bad things by talking about them, over and over, you are literally changing where your brain stores them. The author suggests that to help communities and organizations stay healthy and supportive, we should always listen with empathy when people share their stories and feelings.

This book fascinates me in so many ways. The author has been a psychotherapist. She's a college professor and runs an animal sanctuary for chickens and ducks! And she lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Whoa.

I want to go to bed, but Jarrod's playing a video game. I should ask when he's planning to go to bed. I find out tomorrow whether I get that house on SE Harrison. I just realized I hadn't posted about meeting the guy and seeing the house on Friday: It went really well. So well that even though the rent is on the high side and it's an omni household, I want that dang room! *lol* But it's a popular part of town, and five people (when I was there) were on the list as "seriously interested." So we'll see.