Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"

[Bookwork]

I half understand tenure at Berkeley, CA DEI tranny etc etc, right?

What @Potatis Salad documented above is kind of interesting in that regard. Joe was hired as an assistant prof while being Joseph and his name is changed to Grace in the same year that he is promoted to associate prof.

While the promotion's unlikely to have been caused by his more public deviance, his more public deviance might well have been fueled by locking in as an assoc. "Now I'm freer to be my authentic selfie-poo, tee hee."

 

[Anasa Tristis]

You can see where his (terrible) aesthetics, obsessions, and bewildering politics come from - or at least where they begun to simmer into the rancid soup that now slops out every time he opens his mouth.

He tipped his hand on Oscar Wilde, but another culture disrupting Victorian who Joe is obviously trying to emulate is (American born) painter and all around aesthetic genius James Abbott McNeil Whistler. Whistler played a huge role in introducing Victorian high society to the Japanese aesthetic and he and Wilde were "frenemies" who traveled in the same artistic and intellectual circles. Whistler was famous/notorious in his own right as he was constantly pushing his unconventional ideas forward and he antagonized his critics in the papers, in the courts, and in public. Whistler was arrogant, selfish, and an unrepentant snob. He was a "dandy" who fathered quite a few illegitimate children on his mistresses. He conned and swindled his patrons constantly. And he was a brilliant, uncompromising man who literally changed Art History. All the modern artistic movements that came after him were built on his ideas; that painting is an arrangement of colors on a canvas. No more, no less. And that the artist should have no constraints in what he paints, or how he paints it.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

There's simply no way Joe wasn't familiar with him.

 

[Bookwork]

There's simply no way Joe wasn't familiar with him.

Whistler was buddies with an Irish painter named John Lavery. They founded the Royal Society of British Artists together in 1898. This raises the possibility that Joe has changed his name once before and is, as he looks, 169 years old.

 

[Bookwork]

Caption:
Text: death day NOLA dump
169-year-old man wears dress:

Spoiler: The whole fucking carousel

Meanwhile, one-time lumberjack Mallory is mommy blogging on the Chatner and watching more old movies. See spoiler for that, but here's a new-house clue:


Text: left the house for five minutes and he does this

Spoiler: Mal drivel

The egregious misgendering continues. Caption: my SON locked me OUT

Mal got a whole Chatner out of it. And that pic's another location clue. Switching over to X:

Here I am, innocently trapped on the porch, having left the house only for a moment to take out the trash. Did the baby welcome me back inside? Or did he bar the door shut with the immense power of his ravioli-sized fists? [Ed. note: So it's not just Lil and Joe who want Mal locked out, eh?]

See for yourself; let your own eyes be the judge.

Switching over to the Chatner where you can judge the man pants off her:

A Brief Account of the Crimes Committed by the Baby So Far in his Nine Months of Life​

So young and yet so steeped in crime

Welcome back after the Chatner’s Christmas hiatus! We moved the baby and the dogs across the country yet again; the dogs helped by throwing up in the car once a day, less from motion sickness than from (perfectly justifiable but nevertheless inopportune) resentment.

I also used that time to finish a book project that as yet remains classified but which I can promise you will be the first to hear about once the cone of silence has been lifted.

Yesterday I was barred from entering our home by my very own son. You can see for yourself the truth of my account:

Here I am, innocently trapped on the porch, having left the house only for a moment to take out the trash. I was committing chores for the sake of my beautiful family, who are my only thought, waking or sleeping; I do nothing for myself, but labor solely for them.

Yet cruelly, unjustly, and without trial was I prevented from returning by the baby’s wicked refusal to open the door for me. You can see for yourself his prodigious great strength, his massive stature, his giant muscles. He is the strongest baby who has ever lived (many passersby have confirmed this on outings, and what reason would they have to lie? They are disinterested and objective observers, they could gain nothing from overstating the case).

For example, he is so powerful that he has won every single game of tug-of-war we have ever played. And yet he did not choose to temper his strength with compassion for the week. I tell you he laughed, yes and smiled too, to see me trapped outside, exposed to the brutal forces of a West Coast January afternoon. It must have been 60° Fahrenheit. I very nearly wished I had a light sweater with me. Truly it has been said, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.

I pleaded with him earnestly. I marshalled every argument in my favor. I reasoned with him. In vain did I point out my months of loyal service to him. I offered him wealth and reward beyond his imagination, I promised him a life of kingly ease and luxury, a life where he might be carried around and fed and cosseted at all times, where he would never be expected to lift a finger for himself; he was unmoved, and only bashed his little ravioli-shaped fists against the glass. He laughed as he did it. It was no accident. He laughed in triumph.

Others — I will not say who — others who might have been expected to come to my aid merely took pictures of the incident, and laughed. Only after countless minutes had passed and he lost interest in my suffering did he move away from the door, allowing me to make good my escape.

But did he move away in order to be helpful to me? Or even for a neutral reason? I am sorry to say he did not. He moved away from the door only so he could remove all of the shoes from the shoe rack, even though I must have told him a dozen times that this is where the shoes live, that this is their home.

This does not even begin to cover the list of crimes he has committed during his nine short months of life. They are extensive almost beyond belief. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world: [Ed. note: Leaving the excess bullets in because if I don't the bullet items will turn into one big wall o' text]

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good, Laws involving the putting on of socks when we go outside, lest an older couple should stop me on the street and say “Where are that baby’s clothes?” which happened once outside of a library and the shame of which I will carry with me forever
• 
  
• He has stolen the very hat from my head, merely because I dipped my head before him and asked, “Do you like my hat?” Later he has refused to return the hat, using his superior strength to prevent my taking it. Also he has chewed upon the bill of it.
• 
  
• In fact he will steal anything which is on my head, if I tell him it is my hat
• 
  
• He has grabbed the hairs on my arms and legs to steady himself as he stands up, which hurts in a way I can scarcely put into words
• 
  
• He has chewed on the corners of my Patrick O’Brian novels, even when Captain Jack Aubrey has been in a great deal of trouble and needed me to keep reading in order to save him
• 
  
• He has splashed all the water out of the dog’s water dish, merely because it is fascinating to him, within easy reach, and I keep forgetting to put it away
• 
  
• He has bitten me — me! His own parent! — with such force I have lost entire fingers, and when I exclaim, “Oh, my son, you have bitten off all my fingers” he laughs again. His remorselessness is chilling
• 
  
• He has snatched the very bread from my lips; only this morning he ate bites out of my toast, which I had prepared for my own particular use, merely because I placed the toast right in front of his tiny little moon-face and looked away, saying “I sure hope nobody eats my toast right now…”
• 
  
• He has deliberately and wantonly fallen asleep in his little car seat even after I have warned him that he is not allowed to nap until we get home in five minutes
• 
  
• He has chomped on his mother’s ball of yarn, which she is using to knit a sweater for his very own use, until it has been deformed beyond all recognition, and is now more of a clump than a ball
• 
  
• He has refused to put the sweater on so she can see how it looks
• 
  
• He refuses to put on all sweaters and when we attempt to pull his arms very gently through the softest sleeves, howls as if he is being killed with sticks and rocks
• 
  
• He has flung contraband to the dogs on the floor more often than I can count, items which have been strictly forbidden to them and which they now openly, flagrantly enjoy on a daily basis. Cheeses and so on
• 
  
• And he did this to his other mother’s essay on demonology
• 
  
• He has knocked me down and rendered me unconscious on innumerable occasions, and will only revive me by placing a careful hand on my forehead after minutes of arbitrary giggling and waiting
• 
  
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries
• 
  
• He has treated with rapacious destruction the cabinets in the kitchen and tried to flush the toilet by himself, even when the most attractive and cleanest of toys are presented to him as an alternative
• 
  
• And he has outgrown some of his cutest outfits in a matter of days, even though the tags say they are supposed to fit him for another two months, and he is never going to get smaller again to fit back into them; not never, not once, not even for a single day will he get smaller again.
• 
  
• And I have told him on several occasions that he is getting too big and must slow down. He does not slow down

In every stage of these Oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

You can see his conduct for yourself.

I ask you: Is this just? Is this fair? Has he the right to exclude me from my home without bringing charges against me, without permitting me to face my accusers, without benefit of trial featuring a jury of my peers? But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream; I am sure he will wake from his nap ready to pursue kindness and right action, and he will never try to steal a bite of the toast I am making now.

Link | Archive

With that out of the way, it's back to X for Movie Time:

watching James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy always makes me feel insane (he's great obviously, Cohan is what baffles me). people used to salivate for this stuff. "this is entertainment," they'd say

now he's tap dancing to prove he's good enough to fight in World War I. there's still like 40 minutes to go

From Lil? Nada. Maybe she's concentrating on teaching students halfway across the continent.

 

[Anasa Tristis]

Mal got a whole Chatner out of it.

Although nauseating as another entry in the Happiest Pooner Alive Diary, form-wise that was actually readable for once.

See for yourself; let your own eyes be the judge.

Jeebus. That's quite the head of gray, receding and thinning hair for a 38 year old.

The theme of being shut out/locked out and outside looking in/inside looking out is remarkably recurrent with our Mal, isn't it?

 

[Potatis Salad]

Full caption (he had to divide it into a caption and a couple of comments due to length):

Spoiler: literally shaking from PTSD

So, I always think I hate conferences, and I do, for all the regular reasons. The collapse of the humanities means that there are fewer jobs, less security, and a general sense of despair—this affects everything from the kinds of papers feel they should be doing, to the kinds of relations people feel able to cultivate, to the ways that passionate disagreements about ideas seem difficult and perhaps failures of solidarity—in their place, a set of personal critiques seem more viable, and while they are obviously often strong and powerful, the wires around critique and criticism get tangled. Big conferences make me remember that elsewhere in my discipline there are actual reactionaries, actual Zionists, and that they are powerful enough to suppress (eg, this year) a vote on BDS.

Mostly I hate myself at conferences—I’m at my most unmoderated, which can make people feel uncomfortable or confused. I’m consistently baffled by my own position within the profession—overrated, for sure, but by whom and in what circumstances (and with what material consequences) are unclear—so consequently I want to hide from myself and everyone else. This year was easier in that respect because my main role was trying to patch a star graduate student into various professional networks, and it was nice to feel a bit like a competent PA for once, rather than an incompetent former child star, hoping to get recognized and then recoiling whenever it happens.

But also easier because, for the first time, I shared with someone who knew the figures involved a story about an intimate violation, or rather two, that happened in professional settings eleven and fifteen years ago. I’ve written about these, and I’m not going to share any more about it, but just to say that that conversation was revelatory and maybe even healing. I realized as I was relating those stories, in the conference hotel bar, I had lost the capacity to make sentences, the world receded and felt duller, and I started to shake. I realized at once that this was a classic post-traumatic response, but I didn’t realize until later the way in which that trauma response has shaped my hatred of conferences.

The ways in which that history has shaped my experiences of conferences was revelatory, and I’m thankful to the old friend who heard me rambling about this in NOLA yesterday. My fear of conferences is a fear of him—a literal fear he will be there and attack me again—and also a fear that I will become, or have become, like him. That “he put his disease in me,” as Dolores says in BV. I have to learn patience, and I have to learn to forgive myself for having been sexually assaulted. It is a hard task. I am grateful to the many who have helped me work with and through this symptom. The fact is that conferences may suck institutionally, they are still the places where most of my best friends hang out. And I love you all—the many brilliant women and queers I call my friends—for bearing with a certain pathological charisma—an unearned privilege that it is my privilege to despise in myself.

One of my biggest fears has always been that I am like my abuser—a fear that takes the name of “charisma.” At grad school, a dear friend and I chatted once about some bro we both disliked, and I suddenly got worried that everything I hated about this guy was also true of me. (Psychoanalysis makes gossiping difficult.) My friend said, “god, no, of course not. I mean, superficially I suppose there’s maybe a shared pathological charisma, but…” and then she drifted off. One thing that I have done that he never did was get sober, and (if you’ll forgive me for saying gauche) work to turn my will and my life over to a power greater than myself. Nearly nine years sober, and just about now I’ve been sober for half as long as I was in active addiction. I also acknowledge that the intimate violations in question happened when I was drunk, and I have no doubt that my abuser thought I’d consented. I doubt he ever thinks about me now. And I have hurt people who deserved better from me, in related though not comparable ways—I’ve done some things sober that bring me shame to contemplate, though only two or three in nine years, and one of them clearly wasn’t my fault—the shame itself was, as I look back now, clearly itself a trauma response.

tl;dr Joe claims he was "sexually assaulted" and "intimately violated" twice, at conferences 11 and 15 years ago, while he was drunk. He admits that the male """abuser""" definitely thought that Joe consented to the act(s). And now muh PTSD.

 

[kazuhiro]

I have hurt people who deserved better from me, in related though not comparable ways—I’ve done some things sober that bring me shame to contemplate, though only two or three in nine years, and one of them clearly wasn’t my fault

The key admissions in all that bs.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

tl;dr Joe claims he was "sexually assaulted" and "intimately violated" twice, at conferences 11 and 15 years ago, while he was drunk. He admits that the male """abuser""" definitely thought that Joe consented to the act(s). And now muh PTSD.

I wish he wasn't lying, it would be nice to think of him suffering.

Look at that face, though. This is just more waif-posturing. Gross.

 

[Anasa Tristis]

Look at that face, though. This is just more waif-posturing. Gross

I wonder how many outfits and accessories he rejected and then how many photos he nixed before choosing and posting that one. The black & cream tones + big glasses vulnerability + the feminine hand placement + soft hair framing his face + the ever so slightly pursed lips + serious stillness + the direct (but again, soft & soo vulnerable!) gaze= LMAO.

Sideshow Joe at his manipulative best, really. Ya almost think he still has his soul.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

I wonder how many outfits and accessories he rejected and then how many photos he nixed before choosing and posting that one. The black & cream tones + big glasses vulnerability + the feminine hand placement + soft hair framing his face + the ever so slightly pursed lips + serious stillness + the direct (but again, soft & soo vulnerable!) gaze= LMAO.

Sideshow Joe at his manipulative best, really. Ya almost think he still has his soul.

It's the patented "Brianna Wu" troon pucker.

 

[monstrous bubo]

Big conferences make me remember that elsewhere in my discipline there are actual reactionaries, actual Zionists, and that they are powerful enough to suppress (eg, this year) a vote on BDS.

Of course he’s a BDS faggot. Never a peep about boycotting anyone else. To be fair though, Joe’s boycott of Israel is just doing Israel a favour.

One thing that I have done that he never did was get sober, and (if you’ll forgive me for saying gauche) work to turn my will and my life over to a power greater than myself.

I’d love to know how Joe conceives of this power, and how responsible it is for the sex addiction which replaced the alcohol addiction.

From Lil? Nada.

The throuple’s Harpo proving once again she’s the smartest of them all.

The key admissions in all that bs.

His protest that it wasn’t his fault is just perfect.

I wonder how many outfits and accessories he rejected and then how many photos he nixed before choosing and posting that one.

Makes a change from summer’s grotty t-shirts and jeans look. It’s almost as if he’s started taking his academic career seriously again.

 

[Stupid Sexy Flanders]

tl;dr Joe claims he was "sexually assaulted" and "intimately violated" twice, at conferences 11 and 15 years ago, while he was drunk. He admits that the male """abuser""" definitely thought that Joe consented to the act(s). And now muh PTSD.

Aahahahahahahaaaaa. Yes, Joe, sure people would like to sexually abuse you.

He's trying to build up some trauma case, but sorry Joe - you're not some pretty lil thing, so no one will believe you. Enjoy the overton window!

 

[Bookwork]

So filtered. No trace of a beard. Reads kind of like he thinks something he's done could surface. Wait, I'm the victim! And I'm sober now.

 

[Potatis Salad]

I’d love to know how Joe conceives of this power,

In the throes of the Pedo Johnny scandal and their drama-fueled meltdown and decamping to Brooklyn, Joe admitted that his AA higher power was New York City.

 

[Autistic Nonetheless]

Uhhh so brave. The self excoriating ‘this is not my fault’, ‘I have so much charisma’ at the end is mildly amusing but it does give the text the feeling of an actual confession. What im interesting in is the Berkeley workplace sexual assault receipts he’s threatened to drop for like a year now. Surely that's coming. OP will deliver.

Boy, these people sure do get raped a lot.

 

[Zemblan Physics]

I think this was a case of drunk Joe deciding to try queerness in vivo, only to realize it made him feel icky (because he is nothing but a straight huwite male). In order to protect his ego, because Joe can’t accept he is stupid and makes bad decisions, he calls this ”assault”.

 

[AirdropShitposts]

So, I always think I hate conferences, and I do, for all the regular reasons. The collapse of the humanities means that there are fewer jobs, less security, and a general sense of despair—this affects everything from the kinds of papers feel they should be doing, to the kinds of relations people feel able to cultivate, to the ways that passionate disagreements about ideas seem difficult and perhaps failures of solidarity—in their place, a set of personal critiques seem more viable, and while they are obviously often strong and powerful, the wires around critique and criticism get tangled. Big conferences make me remember that elsewhere in my discipline there are actual reactionaries, actual Zionists, and that they are powerful enough to suppress (eg, this year) a vote on BDS.

Maybe English Conferences should not waste time on voting for something symbolic yet meaningless that it won't remotely enforce and instead engage in solidarity at finding out a way people might want English scholarship and be willing to pay for it.

 

[Dr. Butt]

He's trying to build up some trauma case

He's getting out in front of something he's done.

 

[Potatis Salad]

I think this was a case of drunk Joe deciding to try queerness in vivo, only to realize it made him feel icky (because he is nothing but a straight huwite male). In order to protect his ego, because Joe can’t accept he is stupid and makes bad decisions, he calls this ”assault”.

I think he also really wants to be a victim of sexual assault because 1.) victimhood is currency, 2.) he thinks it makes him more of a woman so he can fit in among:

the many brilliant women and queers I call my friends—[who tolerate my] pathological charisma—[my] unearned privilege

Also, he's lobbing this accusation because he himself is a sex pest who has...maybe not outright assaulted, but come on extremely strongly, wheedled or scammed consent out of inappropriate partners (his obsession with "twinks"? that Asian kid he was infatuated with who was his former student? Bunkersluts?).

Every accusation is a confession.

 

[Stupid Sexy Flanders]

Also, he's lobbing this accusation because he himself is a sex pest who has...maybe not outright assaulted, but come on extremely strongly, wheedled or scammed consent out of inappropriate partners (his obsession with "twinks"? that Asian kid he was infatuated with who was his former student? Bunkersluts?).

It's obvious something happened between him and Berkley - I kind of assumed it was his inappropriate obsession with getting students to read penis poetry and stuff like that. It could be as you said that he acted inappropriately towards an individual too which caused a strife and he's trying to get ahead of that.