Chat today

FYI: There's a DELIGHTFULLY funny Scrubs take on A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's probably up on youtube somewhere.

I wasn't able to ask this during the chat because I was at work. But my mom's family has decided to have the big old family Christmas in April or May due to scheduling difficulties....however the gifts people usually give me are gift cards that I use to fill the gap until the disbursal of my student loans in February. Is there a polite way to ask that if the various family members were planning on purchasing gift cards to my grocery stores that I would very much appreciate them being sent around Christmas for said reason? Or should I just hope that I will be living in the same place after graduation and will be able to use gift cards received so late?

Robin says: It would be awkward of you to ask, but perhaps your mother (or whoever came up with Christmas in April) could ask on your behalf.

Regarding the unwanted commentary on paleness: my best response has always been, "Yes, my dermatologist LOVES me!" It's true, it's funny, and may make a dent in the unnaturally bronze cancer culture. Okay, that last is wishful thinking; but melanoma is not something to be courted for mere social status (as important as that may seem at times...)

I mostly get compliments on my porcelain skin, but if anyone ever makes a wisecrack about it, I say "I'd rather look like a ghost than a baseball mitt."

When I get remarks about my super pale skin, my favorite comeback is, "being a little transparent is fun - I can trace my veins all the way up my arm and everything!"

It *is* fun being pale! I tell people I'm going for the supermodel look, that I'm trying to bankrupt my dermatologist, that it makes me look oh so dramatic in black, that the look of a deep-friend lobster just doesn't suit me, I could go on and on.

I actually found Dracula really misogynistic! Lucy's role as the vessel for the men to exercise their homoerotic attraction really turned me off, so by the time the book got to Mina's desire to be kept in the loop and not condescended to, I was disinclined to give it a charitable reading.

Robin says: Really? I'm intrigued. I'll have to give it another go. One thing I've noticed is that English majors and theater majors--which is what I was--tend to approach texts differently. Y'all look for what's there, we look for what plausibly could be there, if we were to produce it as a play. I don't think it would be hard to stage a feminist version of "Dracula" ... so it's entirely likely that I was reading my version of it, and not what Stoker actually wrote. Off-topic, did you get my e-mail about dark energy? Was that as weird as I thought it was?