Fictional love, poverty, Mrs Lestrange, horrible hairballs

[Tabouli]

Um, the "venison" in the title of my last port was an atavistic remnant of the Post I Was Going to Write, which was originally meant to begin with Viggo and end with Harry's doe daemon.  Sort of like a vestigial tail, or dew claw.

David:
> I don't tend to think of fictional characters as sexy - like Amber, I 
needed to be corrupted first.<

Ahaaaa!  (Tabouli scents one of her pet topics).  OK, everyone, come clean, come clean.  We've all been enthusing about movie stars and fictional characters in HP... where do mysterious characters you correspond with by letter or email fit into the picture?  Do people consider their fellow HPFGU listmembers (at least, those they haven't met) to be fictional characters or real people?  I seem to remember we have at least one internet marriage veteran on-list.  Do you people think you could fall in love with someone without meeting them or even knowing what they looked like?  (I did, with tragic results, though that was snail mail only).

When those of you who did meet fellow listmembers after knowing them online only, how did they compare to their list personas??

Which reminds me of my gloom on-list about my planned trip to the US in late June this year, in which I might, of course, meet some of you, a prospect I find slightly scary.  What kind of Bombadilling, acronymming, cross-cultural analysing, copious post writing humourist have I created in this 'Tabouli' character?  How is my real self ever going to measure up??  Eeeeee!

Kimberly:
> I'm from St. Louis

Are you still there?  Because the very conference for which I am meant to be going to the US is going to be held in St Louis, from the 29th of June to the 2nd of July!  Of course, as I gloomed on-list, my bank account is currently looking so meagre I'm starting to wonder whether I can afford to go at all, let alone embark on the USA-crossing globe-trotting trip I really want to go on.  There is, as I am increasingly coming to realise, one small problem with my liberating, bohemian, creative escape from full-time work to impoverished writer status, and that is of course the impoverished bit.

I'm happy to starve for my art for a couple of years, but living on my current (lack of) income, while OK if I am holed up at home writing novels and HPFGU messages, is certainly not going to pay for a trip to the US, especially when all costs are effectively doubled after arrival due to the exchange rate (and tripled in the UK, where I'd like to go afterward).  O dear.  I could of course inflict another job on myself, but now I've committed myself to running my own business, it's going to be very tricky to organise a job to fit around the cross-cultural training sessions I hope to be running lots of from February to April (start of first semester in Australian universities), which, while lucrative-ish, are unlikely to generate enough.  But not to despair just yet.  I still have six months.  Perhaps I can get someone to pay me lavish sums of money for two days a week of writing satirical verses about Tom Bombadil or something...

David:
>>warmth and playfulness and steadfastness and creativity 
and sense of wonder (etc.)  Just add strong, philosophical soul and a splash 
of articulate wit, sprinkle with good hair and enjoy!<<
>
>Come to think of it, you get all that here <on HPFGU> without any 
>of that tedious life commitment stuff (or sex).

Including the sprinkling of good hair?

> Otherwise the other sexy female is Mrs Lestrange - assuming it is she 
in the pensieve<

Ahhh yes.  There I was, musing sadly that while I resemble Hermione in many inner respects, there don't appear to be any women who resemble me physically on the cast of HP or LOTR.  I'd forgotten about Mrs Lestrange.  Now *there's* a possibility.

Mrs Lestrange: Thick, dark, shiny hair
Tabouli: Dark, shiny hair (though unruly and no longer especially thick after her trip to China, which made her so sick that half of it, no doubt the Caucasian half, fell out and only partly grew back)

Mrs Lestrange: Heavy lidded eyes
Tabouli: Heavy lidded eyes

Mrs Lestrange: Sits in chained chair as if it is a throne
Tabouli: Sits in desk chair as if it is a chaise longue (slouched, with feet in open drawer)

Mrs Lestrange: Loyal supporter of Dark Lord despite prospect of Azkaban
Tabouli: Loyal worshipper of penfriend who turned out so vile in person that his year-long stay in Australia was like a jail sentence

Mrs Lestrange: Sweeps out of dungeons
Tabouli: Never sweeps anything if she can help it

(hey, maybe I should re-invent myself as Smouldering Semi-Sino Sex-Goddess Supporter of Sinister Snake-Men!)

> > David Re-invents Himself as Straggling Smouldering Semi-
>>Scandinavian Sex God"...
>
>Re-invents?  What do you mean, reinvents?

Tabouli detects a hint of hurt manly vanity, and scrabbles hastily in her Outrageous Flattery drawer (which is the one she rests her feet in while typing) for something to convince David of his pre-existing, albeit non-Straggling, Smouldering Semi-Scandinavian Sex-God status...

Cindy:
> If Neil is Mr. January, then David (wearing a cloud of pink chiffon,  
a strand of pearls and glittery pink make-up) is Mr. February and 
everyone's favorite Valentine.

...but reads on and discovers that Cindy has already reassured him.

Amy Z:
> Now now, be nice.  All of us except the few certifiable sex 
god[desse]s on the list have one or more physical attributes that 
someone could label distasteful.  Actually, make that all of us, bar 
none, since there are bound to be people who feel strongly on both 
sides of any physical question (e.g. I find shaven legs odd and shaven 
armpits positively creepy--a minority view, I recognize, at least 
in the US--but in any case it wouldn't be very nice of me to point and 
say "yuck").

Nice?  Me?  (says Tabouli, lifting her heavy lids to gaze innocently at Amy Z).  I should perhaps guard against possible accusations of shallowness by pointing out that I've always drawn a strict division between "good looks" and "attractiveness".  Sure, I have a physical type (good hair, green eyes, tallish and slim but with broad shoulders...), but that's the good looks department only.  I can find a man simultaneously extremely good-looking and extremely unattractive.  It's very plain to me (ha ha) that attractiveness is what really counts.  I'm into holism, remember?  I didn't find Daniel or Elijah at all attractive from the photos I saw before the films (photos give info on good looks only), it was the qualities they were projecting through their looks in the films, all the warm, playful, philosophical stuff, that lit them up and made them attractive to me.  Of course, this brings up back to the fictional stuff: presuming what I was attracted to was the part they were playing.  Out of role, I think Daniel has the edge over Elijah.

As for my not-nice musings on hair, hey, nearly everything I said except my reference to the gorilla-like Italian man is a matter of personal choice and taste.  Men can wax their chests if they want, but I don't have to like it and don't!  And I'd prefer them to wax a hairy back, but it's not my decision.  Same with women and their legs and armpits.  Despite being aware of and mostly agreeing with feminist ideology on the body hair front, I shamefacedly admit to media corruption on this front (i.e. I remove the hair from mine; my hair fetish doesn't extend to my own leg and armpit hair), but I have the *utmost* respect for women who reject that stuff and don't, even though I don't like the look of it.

As for the gorilla-like Italian man, I admit this is rude, but given his behaviour during our brief relationship I feel no inclination to be generous about his appearance.  He was Awful Man Two.  Post Awful Man One I was a wreck, I probably had what I'm now told is called body dysmorphic disorder from continual negative feedback about my looks for about a year, and I *told* Italian gorilla this, told him I was a mess and it was probably a bad idea to start a relationship with me at the moment, told him how I'd had my self-esteem destroyed to the point where I couldn't look at myself in the mirror.  He "listened" and feigned all earnest understanding and sympathy (ha), and then two days later told me he had been ashamed to introduce me to his friend Michael because I wasn't pretty, blonde and busty enough to live up to Michael's standards.  Such was my demoralisation at the time I didn't kick him in the balls and walk out for another couple of months (OK, so I never kicked him in the balls, but I wish I had), but under the circumstances I feel quite justified in being as rude as I like about his looks.  And he *was* hairy.  He was hairy beyond *belief*.

However, there are two little happy postscripts to this... one was that his friend Michael's actual comment after meeting me was ha, she's far too interesting and intelligent for you, you'll bore her to death and she'll leave you (heh heh heh).  The second was that I got back from overseas with self-esteem restored to a string of oogly "let's have coffee" "why haven't you rung me, have you forgotten about me already?" emails from him, and finally bit the bullet and met him, only to discover that he'd grown his hair long ("Oh, but not because I know you like hair or anything, I just thought I'd grow it long...").   What a prat.  I alternately savaged him and glaciered him with silence (which unnerved him completely) for a couple of hours, almost reducing him to tears ("well if it makes you feel any better you're hurting me now as much as I hurt you" he clicheed... could he be any more pathetic?), and then  practically shut the door in his face.  And, when he sent another pitiful email a month later ("have you forgiven me yet?") I wrote a very curt nasty note explaining what "no more contact with you" meant and blocked his address.

Ha.

Tabouli (who wishes her assertiveness could be a little more consistent)


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