between the rock and the cold, cold sea

See the shelves in that picture? I built them. From scratch. I cut the planks to length – for only the third time in my life using a saw – measured the heights, nailed them in place, put some more nails in when the first nails looked like they weren’t quite doing the job, bashed my thumb with the hammer, and stuck wood glue down the worst of the gaps.

It’s not perfect. It wobbles a little, a couple of the shelves are slightly slanted, and I need to put one more plank in place tomorrow (I’m too tired tonight to finish) and finish the edges with sandpaper. (Maybe, in the summer, I will varnish it. Probably not, though). But it does the job, or will – probably – and it cost, including tools like the saw, which I had to purchase last weekend, less than an equivalent set of shelves from Ikea, and at least a third less than pre-built cabinetry. (Okay, so the cabinetry has somewhat better structural integrity and shiny pretty finish. But still.)

No one ever taught me how to do this. I decided I want to try. And that meant learning by doing. With all the terror and flaws and potential horrible failure modes that implies. (My mother helped when I needed a second pair of hands, but she didn’t believe I could do it. In fact, her first reaction on learning of my planned attempt: “You can’t do it! You’ll never be able to do it! No!”)

(One would think I was seven, and not coming up on twenty-seven.) (Also, hell, am I really coming up twenty-seven? When I was seven I thought I’d be queen of the universe by twenty.)

The success of this project hasn’t been proved out yet – the proof will come tomorrow, when I hammer in the last shelf-plank and test the others with the weight of books – but it doesn’t seem fragile. There is tensile strength in inch-thick pine and two-inch nails…

Anyway. I don’t want to say that it’s gendered, learning how to build things. But I think my mother’s mental resistance to the idea of my building-competence is at least partly gendered, and I think my lack of experience with banging shit together is also partly gendered: female persons are subtly culturally discouraged from learning to do stuff like Hang Shelves or Build Shelves – not only in formal lessons, but informally. That could just be my impression, though.

In conclusion: I built shelves!

Gemma Files on Zero Dark Thirty:

As ever, Bigelow always manages to always frame things for maximum impact and wring incredible suspense out of even the most foregone conclusions. I keep seeing that last track through the post-”Geronimo, for God and country” wreckage of bin Laden’s hideout, where she makes sure that the team’s one Muslim member is the person who gets to see all the broken heads and shot-out eyes up close and personal. And Maya, in her last appearance, sole passenger on a troop transport plane, crying because she doesn’t know where she wants to go, and probably not being entirely aware of it. So basically, what I’m saying is fuck you, fellas; whoever ends up getting that Oscar this year needs to know both that Bigelow is the motherfucker who found this place, and that this is the one to beat.

N.K. Jemisin on Gamefail bluescreen:

It’s obvious the game developers didn’t think much about how the characters in their xenophobic fantasy world would logically react to having a foreigner and a woman — and this is definitely a patriarchial, xenophobic culture — as their much-lauded savior. I don’t think the developers thought much about the characterization for this game at all, let alone on a level that acknowledges the impacts of race and gender and other socioeconomic factors, and their intersections, on worldbuilding. But here’s what’s irritating: the game pays lip service to these issues, even though it doesn’t engage with them on a deeper level.

The comment thread on Where Are The Older Women? is still going strong at 110 comments: lots of useful recommendations and hardly a troll in sight. Which makes me rather happy.

Anyway. Spent yesterday and last night hanging out with a friend who's heading off soon to Brussels to intern at Parliament. We mainlined The Dark Knight Rises (not awful), Resident Evil Retribution (awful: has not even the vaguest glimmer of plot) and Dredd (AWESOMESAUCE), about which probably (possibly) more later.

Now I must get my arse in gear and do more with my day than merely move shelves around...

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Oh, wait. I forgot to log Wednesday's exercise. Mile in 12:00, treadmill; 10K exercise bike, 29:00. Some weights.

Mass: 103.5kg.

But a lovely evening for taking pictures of the harbour. And seals.