C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 49

no time for your unexamined patriarchal party line

Indy had a dentist appointment today. The dentist, who is a woman, and who keeps up a pretty constant stream of chatter to reassure her child patients, made no fewer than four separate comments to Henry about how “girls talk a lot.”

By the third I was livid. What I do not need is a woman–perhaps ESPECIALLY a professional woman, A DOCTOR–reinforcing stereotypes that my six year old son has *certainly* never come into contact with from me, and which I wish him to be armed to resist when he does...

oh god my shoulders

I have terrible knots in my shoulders, and a perpetually over-stretched subscapularis nerve under my right shoulder blade. I mean, like, this is a decades-old injury. My friend E, who is a massage therapist, used to tell me she wanted to spend some quality time with her fingers in my armpit, which I always thought was a joke until she got her hands on me and spent some quality time with her fingers in my armpit. Turns out that, since the subscapularis is entirely covered by bone, the way you...

An open letter to the electors

I’ve written an open letter to the electors via DearElector. There’s a copy of the letter posted here, where you can add your name as a signator, if you feel I’ve said anything worthwhile, but the body of the text is also replicated in this post.

Dear Elector:

These are the things I can probably safely say I know about you:

You have deeply held convictions.
You are politically active.
You are a Republican.

That’s it: that’s all I know about you. I know those things because you’re a Republican...

a Walker Papers 2016 election prediction

I *do* have a throw-away comment about the 2016 election in one of my #WalkerPapers short stories. I thought I did.

The protagonist is Ashley, the little girl from #ThunderbirdFalls, 20 years later:

“I had a grenade launcher.
I wasn’t supposed to, of course. Nobody was, especially since the country-wide crackdown after the election riots when I was seventeen.”

The story was written in 2012 and was a deliberate (given the Walker Papers timeline) reference to the 2016 elections, and I kept the...

a Beauty and the Beast tangent

So I’m on a Beauty and the Beast kick right now and I mentioned to Ted yesterday morning that if your favourite fairy tale is BatB (as mine has always been), that it is very likely that at some point quite early on you realize that having the Beast transform back into the Prince is a terrible disappointment. The thing is you (we, Beauty) have fallen in love with the *Beast*. We want the *Beast*. We don’t want a stupid prince.

Ted’s response to this was pretty much O.O

So he mentioned the topi...

Picoreview: Fantastic Beasts

Picoreview: Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them: really not very good.

It started out slowly and took far too long to end. There were tedious bits in between occasionally interrupted by charm, but the charm was rarely presented by Eddie Redmayne’s Newt, who, as the lead, literally had a line about how people didn’t really like him very much. But that was okay, because Katherine Waterson, as the other lead, was also almost entirely unlikeable. (Wait…)

To make it worse, though, the second lea...

Memorial Dance Scholarship Fund

My mom was a dancer, and we’ve decided to offer a dance scholarship in her name, as a memorial. We’ve set up a GoFundMe page, the Rosie Murphy Dance Scholarship Fund, and if you’re inclined or inspired in any way to donate a little to the fund, my family and I would be profoundly grateful.

Our immediate goal is to secure $2500: enough funds to create a five year scholarship. Our longer term goal is to create a scholarship in perpetuity, which is possible if we can get $15,000 into our invest...

a fabulous coat & the ruin of two families

Yesterday over on Facebook I posted a link to an utterly fabulous 1940s bomber-style womens’ jacket. Things almost immediately got out of control as my dear friend Leah Moore loved it as much as I did:

Leah: That is just gorgeous. I would marry that jacket.

Catie: I would show up at the altar and object because I saw it first and loved it more.

Leah: Oh damn!

Leah: With high waist trousers and a killer haircut….oh man…

Catie: actually i would show up at the altar and you would look so fabulo...

Informed vs Sane: Fight!

I’ve spent most of the past several years a lot more checked out of the news cycle than I think I should be, because so much of it is toxic or religious wars in politics and I simply have not had the emotional bandwidth to deal with it.

I *hate* that. I grew up in a very political family and I feel like it’s my duty to be informed and aware and able to formulate an intelligent opinion.

I also grew up in an era when the news cycle wasn’t a hyper-excited 24 hour freak-fest desperate to get vie...

Picoreview: Donegal

I was invited last week to see the Abbey Theatre‘s new play, Donegal, which is billed as a light-hearted play with music.

I think the Irish have a different idea of what constitutes ‘light-hearted’ than I do.

I mean, nobody dies in it, and there are moments that are funny, so I think that’s why it qualifies as ‘light-hearted’. But the play is about an Irish country-western star whose peak has passed, her son who left Ireland to very successfully pursue his own country-western career in Americ...