I need some pointers for flaunting myself, as part of some role-modeling I want to do. That is, I’m going to be the change I want to see in the world [well, at Rocky], by acting as though I’m encouraged to strut my sexuality, and encouraging other men to do so, and looking for preshows don’t follow a sexist model, and encouraging others to do so.

Finding sexuality-flaunting clothing for men isn’t easy. Between the Garment District and Hubba-Hubba, I added some more sexual clothing to my repertoire (and got some appreciative comments and some snarky comments), but I need more. I don’t have a style, so I’m willing to experiment, but my budget is limited. Does anyone have suggestions on what to wear and where to get it?

Given the excellent response to my last post, I’m going to keep the topic alive– though, hopefully in less dramatic ways. I’ll skip posting about specifics concerns that Elaina and I discussed, but if you want to hear them or talk about the issue further with me, get in touch.

Elaina is quitting the show for a variety of reasons, but the relevant one is sexism at Rocky. She convinced me that the problem is extensive, but I don’t know how to respect those concerns and still encourage the individual creative talents and sexualities of our members and the boundary-pushing of the show. But I think we can find a way, and enjoy our work better for reaching for it.

Sexism has become a party-crashing term. People worry that if they acknowledge it, it will make every decision more difficult and force us to be more conservative. It shouldn’t. Sexism itself– the faulty societally-ingrained role preconceptions we have– is inherently incredibly conservative and creativity-blocking. By harboring it, we cripple the sexual and individual potential of our members.

I think that the best solution to the sexism problem has to do with promoting an attitude at the show, not by making rules, and I think we can do it, because we’re strong, freely-sexual people who want to promote sexual equality. This attitude would be characterized by honest recognition of how our actions and shows play out sexual stereotypes, and the constant search for what’s beyond them.

One aspect of this attitude might be that men at Rocky would be encouraged (expected) to put themselves on sexual display as much as women. It will make us better men. Another is that we should consider the sexism-jostling potential of our preshows. We can get more out of challenging our audience than playing to its fantasies.

Next week: How to get the most out of a rape fantasy…

I’m probably getting a new sort-of sibling! My [adopted] brother’s best friend’s girlfriend is in a broken foster care situation, and my brother has convinced my parents to become her long-term guardians. The home study is next week. I’ll probably meet her first at Thanksgiving, but my mom says she livens up the house. My parents are going to move into my bedroom my mom’s office, and she’s going to move into my parent’s bedroom.

The Rocky show last night was great! For non-FBCers, if you haven’t seen this year’s preshow lineup yet, don’t miss our Halloween Show, at 10 pm!

For FBCers, oh, what a tangled web we weave! I now feel good and weight-lifted about my own interpersonals at Rocky, but I worry that broken-love/relationship troubles have practically become an epidemic. This might even call for a support group. I keep wanting to diagram it all out, but my efforts are probably better applied to being an open ear– if anyone wants one, I’m here. And if I haven’t been there when you wanted someone, please believe that it’s just because I’m distractable, not because my sympathy has run thin.

The Rocky party last night at Jon’s was great, and I really enjoyed myself. At the same time, it’s seemed recently that we need something new at parties. I can’t tell if it’s just me, but I’m going to explore it in words here and see if it resonates.

I love Rocky. I love the people there, I love the sexuality, I love the cute social intricacies, and I love the subversive creativity of our endeavor. And I love Rocky after-parties in all of their incarnations– and there have been many different kinds since I joined. There are laid-back socializing parties; drinking-and-orgy parties, when someone has an agenda; and truth and dare parties, when people want more but aren’t sure what. And that’s just the large group dynamics– often the best parts of parties happen between two or three people– but right now I’m interested in the group mode.

In the last month or two, we hit on a variation of the socializing party that’s all about revealing ourselves through references. At first it was jokes: we had two parties consisting almost entirely of them. Now it’s internet fads, communal geek references, and obsessions from our pasts. Bit-by-bit, people are letting each other into their private worlds by opening up the boxes in their personal attics, and seeing if anyone else has similar cruft.

At last that’s my analysis. At the party last night, I found spots in between socializing circles so I could watch (I like to watch) and stick my thumb into several pies, so I can easily imagine that someone more directly involved would have a different experience.

And I might be staying remote because I’m not as interested in it. For me, that kind of party was fascinating at first, but it’s gotten to be “the same”. Maybe if I were to involve myself more, I’d get more into it, but I wonder: Are we still on this kick because it’s working for most people, or because we don’t know what else to do?

Recently, we’ve all seemed really comfortable with each other, and pretty free sexual tensions, so we should be able to trust each other, but I don’t think people are talking about things they really care about. It seems like everyone’s wearing their ego-armor, and we’re working around it, but I don’t think we need it, and if we all pull together, we might be able to open each other up in new ways.

On Tuesday, November 7, Election Day, I’m holding a Nail-Biting Party to watch the results come in.

Invite your friends! We’ll have champagne to celebrate (and, if needed, something stronger to drown our sorrows), and good discussion throughout the night. This could be the most interesting election and the greatest change to the political arena in decades!

I live at 283 Washington St in Cambridge. Directions are at http://www.existencia.org/info/grey17.txt

RSVPs aren’t required, but they’d help me get a sense of the size of the group.

I haven’t really used LJ as an emotional outlet, but I’ve been twisted in emotions recently so I thought I’d try it as an experiment.

For the past few days, I keep getting into this stupid spiral around thoughts of her. Sure, she’s awfully pretty and nice, but she’s not some goddess. Yeah, she’s single, but that doesn’t mean that she should get bombarded with guys acting weird around her. I *think* she’s totally not interested in me, but I’m never quite sure. I *think* she’s starting to warm up to me again as a platonic friend, but I’m never quite sure. Do I disappoint her? Do I frustrate her? I care about it too much. And I don’t want to care. I don’t want to read things into her actions, or censor or design my own, or *think* about it so much. I hate to play this kind of game, and I have no idea why I’m doing it. If I knew it didn’t matter, I wouldn’t do it. But on some level, I want it to matter.

Why do I want it to matter so much? Because I want. So what– we usually don’t get what we want. Then, because we were close, and now we’re so far. How could she do this to me? But she didn’t want to hurt me. I was acting strangely toward her, and I drove her away. And then I think I stopped, but by then it wasn’t enough. And now she’s away, and it’s my fault.

So here I am. I am stretched, and twisted; I want and I don’t have. She is …, I don’t know. I have no idea if she has any kind of reciprocal experience. But that’s the way of human existence. She has her own concerns, and even if one of those is me, it’s different from anything I have in my head. And this whole situation may escalate or collapse in a day or in a decade, and I don’t know which would be better.

I want to want nothing but her friendship, and I very nearly do. I want all the bad parts to be taken as a mistake and forgotten, and I almost think they are. But I don’t know if they are, so I keep them alive in me, just in case they are in her. In case the wrong action could hurt her again, or the right one could make something more. And on some level, I know none of this is important, but I can’t seem to shake it. And most of the time, I think I don’t think about it. But there are always days like today.

These are on my mind, so I thought I’d pass them along.

Anyone want to take to the streets over the newest disregard of our civil liberties? Bush’s new law revokes the right of terrorist suspects to challenge their imprisonment, so we’ll never hear the heart-rending human interest stories that usually motivate us to protest. As best I understand it, suspects and interrogators will answer to a military commission, whose rules will be set wholely by the Bush administration. Protecting basic rights may be awfully inconvenient for the government, but they’re there for when that’s all we have. I recently heard of a bumper sticker: “The Democrats think the glass is half empty; The Republicans think the glass is theirs.”

Wonkette and conspiracy theorists everywhere are having a field day with Bush’s recent acquisition of 100,000 acres in Paraguay, and what it might have to do with recent secret meetings, and the nearby, previously-secret military base that was granted national and international criminal court immunity by the Paraguay senate. The going theory is that it’s a Bush family safe-haven for when the US government collapses.

Election day is coming up, followed by Election night, and for those of you not participating in a votergasm.org-style orgy, I want to hold a Election Night Nail-Biting Party. Details later.

And my crimson shag rug arrived today. I feel like I have a real bachelor pad now.

I find myself inundated with projects begging to be “Start-Upped”. These projects range from exciting stray ideas to wires-hanging-out-but-otherwise-finished products, and I can’t bring them to the world alone.

Of the projects I consider start-up-worthy, most are internet-based, most need time not capital, some are social-entrepreneury, some are computer-sciencey, and some are generally acknowledged to be impossible. A few examples are an ESG-style adult learning center, a Frienster-like travel blog site, and vision-to-audio glasses for the blind.

Do you want to be a co-conspirator? I expect to need additional engineers (web development, UIs, and back-ends, all languages), communicators (marketing, business), content people (writing, graphic design), creative types, and organized types. To start, we would be working in our free time, each to her ability. I don’t have any capital, but if that’s people’s most important concern, getting it can be our first task.

If you want to hear about what projects I have in mind, contact me. Which of my projects/ideas we work on depends on the interests of the people who reply. Our first meeting will consist of laying out the possible projects and their current states and choosing between them. Your projects and ideas are welcome too.

I emailed Gary about his speech on Saturday and talked to him further yesterday. That discussion both confirmed my concerns about Gary’s attitudes as director and balanced them. I’m looking forward to Gary’s dictatorship, but my long-term worries are no less. Below are my interpretations from that discussion– not fact– simplified (and perhaps made a little more extreme) for emphasis.

• First, Gary didn’t mean that people can’t write anything in their blogs. Just that he isn’t responsible for noticing (which, he says, was a problem in the past).
• Gary will be a tyrant, but he’s also concerned with our well-being. He believes that his role is to be FBC-incarnate, and that he has responsibility and authority over all decisions and effort. At the same time, he wants the body for which he’s the head to be well-functioning throughout, and that means maintaining good relations with all its members. And I have no reason to believe that he intends to micro-manage or even regularly exercise either his authority or responsibility, only that in any situation where his “directorship” is called-for, it will be of that kind.
• Decisions will be made based on largely Gary’s values and to reflect his ideas. The major forms of communication with Gary-as-director will be “feedback” and “explaining”. Presented with a problem, we can expect solutions to burst full-grown and armored from Gary’s head, and to be largely conclusive before most of us hear about them. The most effective feedback will probably be factual points, extensions that fit his paradigm, and overwhelming dissent. We can expect after-the-fact explanations usually, but probably not before-the-fact ones.
• Gary does believe that fear is a useful motivator, properly balanced with appreciation. He intends to oscillate between these poles, and considers fear to be useful for change and appreciation to reinforce complacency. At the same time, he considers it his fatherly-duty to be philanthropic and just in his use of the switch.
• When I pointed out that many people don’t consider Gary approachable, and that his point-by-point-confrontation approach can be intimidating, he claimed that since his speech all kinds of people had talked to him, and that he’s careful to respond in ways that work for whomever he’s talking to. Only more perspectives will tell.

We also talked about some of Gary’s near-future intentions, but in such confidence that I can’t air them on a public forum.

The panopticon was Foucault’s ultimate structure of modern control, drawing off the inherent power that comes with being aware of others’ actions. Recent technological (camera phones) and socio-technological advances (generally Web 2.0) have led to what worldchanging.com co-founder Jamais Cascio calls the “participatory panopticon”: the first steps into a world of endless self-recording. From worldchanging.com:

The participatory panopticon has been a frequent theme here. Ally RU Sirius (with whom I did an interview a few months back [download here]) talks with Jamais Cascio about the concept here (MP3). It’s a good listen.