anagram of brat

So I mostly "wrote" this post with the Dragon Dictate app on my phone. I downloaded it at the recommendation of Ruthy, who apparently uses it for everything. Since she swears by it, I figured I'd give it a go. It'll be interesting because I speak very differently from how I write... I sense there will be a lot of editing in post. (ETA: Oh dear gods yes wow my spoken rambling makes NO sense written down, lol.)

So, what's been going on... Ferguson. *sigh* It's been really upsetting me, for reasons that should be pretty damned obvious. I don't really want to write too much about it, honestly, both because upsetting, and also because people out there and on the ground have already written, tweeted and livestreamed quite a bit about it in the past couple of weeks as everything unfolded. But yeah, it's... it's been bringing me down, so much that I can only take twitter in small doses now. It's also deeply affected Drew - the other night we had a talk about how he came to the realization I'd been kinda carrying since Trayvon Martin was killed - that if by some miracle (or if we accepted Nuke's still standing offer on paying for a vasectomy reversal) we had a kid, that one day it could be them dead in the street for little to no reason at all. Needless to say, it threw him for a loop, and he got further thrown realizing that I've lived with this constant threat all my life. It's funny, almost anyone else I'd be all *raised eyebrow* yeah, welcome to my life, have a T-shirt, it sucks. Not so much this time - I guess what I'm feeling regarding that discussion is less the usual racial schadenfreude and more of a "ohh, he actually really gets it." I mean, yes it sucks major balls carrying the knowledge of just how much the world sucks around. They're not kidding about ignorance being bliss. (And judging by some of the shit I've seen online, there are a lot of very blissful people out there.) At the same time, it's on some level a relief knowing he does think about it and understands some of it. Not going to lie, it's a nice change from several years ago and him being irritated by the very idea of privilege and how it applies to him.

In other life and adulthood suck news, lol... actually I have some reasonably good news on that front. Reasonably because money still sucks and is going to temporarily suck a bit more than usual, but the suckage will be in service to money ultimately NOT sucking in the reasonably near future. I know, that was clear as mud, and how about I say reasonably a few more times? I guess lets just say I'd been avoiding handling a particular chunk of financial stupid and it had been feeling like an anvil about to drop on my head, but I finally gathered my gonads and dealt with it this week. Again, the dealing with it is still gonna make life annoying for a little while, but at this point I will willingly take being slightly annoyed and inconvenienced over the weight I'd been dragging for the better part of two years. So go me? I guess? Ugh. After rolling around in the relief of finally getting that handled I fell into a sulk about the various little ways my life has been slowly spinning out of my control lately. In slightly less melodramatic turns, even before this week I've noticed there's been a gradual uptick in anxiety/avoidance/self-sabotaging behavior on my part this year. Well, really since about when Dad passed, but its lately gotten to the point where if it hasn't already, its gonna start marching up my pants leg to bite the inside of my ass. So I need to get a firm handle on the plates I already have spinning, safely remove a few, and then seriously sit down and start looking for therapists again. Because fuck this shit.

There has been Massive Monkeyspace Drama on Facebook this week too, which got to such a patently ridiculous level that it looped into hilarious. I'm sure modern incarnations of the purity tests we used to forward around in college have a question concerning "have you ever lost a friend in an online fight?" and I'm also sure I'm down that point as of Monday night, but honestly considering how things fell out I'm okay with that. While the actual drama itself was eyeroll-worthy at best the aftermath seems to be causing some old previous relationship scars to flare up again which just adds some delicious flavor to the mild suck soup that is my head right now. But, eh, it will pass and I will deal with it. I don't really want to get into it much further than that.

It's not been all suck either, but a lot of the not sucky things I can't put into a public post and I also have to go put the laundry in the dryer and return to the massive pile of work that still needs to get done tonight, boo. So I will just leave you with the high point of last weekend, which was cosplaying Carmen Sandiego for Bon Appetit Burlesque's "Around the World in 80 Twirls" show:



I can't remember the last time a costume made me so fucking happy. I've been a Carmen Sandiego fangirl since the game show used to air on PBS and I'd watch it with Roy Jr when he was wee tiny. Hell, I can still sing most of the theme song from memory, but that might have more to do with me also being a Rockapella fangirl. If the wig and the hat weren't so bloody hot I'd just be Carmen Sandiego all the damn time, though I am woefully incapable of pulling off national landmark level heists. I got a lot of compliments on the outfit. Desrvedly I think... I apparently can rock a red trench coat. :)

But back to life, back to reality. *sigh* *hatred*

I had amazing day today up until 11pm when I turned on my phone after Burlesque (and four hours unplugged from the internet) and read the Zimmerman verdict.

FUCK.

I'ma just link to this post I wrote back in March of last year. I don't have any more words than that. Anger, sadness, resignation, frustration, the desire to hug my nephews (and I will next week when I see them) yes. Words? No.

My squee about the rest of the day can wait.

I have to interrupt the usual stream of silliness and bitching, y'all. It's been a long ass while since something on the news has fucked with me this badly and I'm having all kinds of FEELINGS about it, which is one in a bunch of reasons why I'm not dead asleep right now.

This is going to get long and nasty and thorny and opinionated, and I highly suspect some folk are going to squirm/be triggered/get pissed at me reading it. I'm not cutting it. I'm only barely feeling considerate enough to place a trigger warning in the title. Deal. Or scroll.

So let's talk about this kid for a minute:



This is 17 year old Trayvon Martin. He was shot and killed in Florida on February 26 while walking to a 7-11 to get some candy for his brother. Why? According to the man that shot him, "he looked suspicious." ...Uh huh. I'm totally paraphrasing, by the way, his actual words were far more... chilling is the wrong word, but it's all I've got. No I'm not quoting them, google it.

Earlier this evening police released 911 audio of eight calls made at the time of the shooting. After reading the description of their contents here, I've opted to not listen. I know I wouldn't be able to handle it, and I'm having enough trouble sleeping this evening. The description is enough to have me in some ugly tears.

I wouldn't say there is enough coverage of this out there by way of Twitter, blogs and the news, because there isn't, and frankly, there never is when a kid of color dies. (Pretty confident a lot of you are hearing about this for the first time via this post.) However, most of what I could say about this has been said by people far better at this whole expressing outrage and grief on the internet than I am. The #TrayvonMartin hashtag on twitter pretty much covers it, as well as completely breaks my heart six ways from Sunday.

I will say this though. Between this case, this kid's picture (he don't look like anybody's 17, I'm sorry), all the points people have brought up about the (non)value of black boys in our supposedly post-racial society, looking at the way my sisters and friends of color raise their kids, especially their sons, and all the things I hated but completely understood about how my ex used to behave as a large black man in a 90% white public? I think I'm finally okay with not having children in this lifetime, because this is all shit I would have to deal with and worry about every single day as a Black mother, and y'all... I can't even. I don't know how some of you deal with this and still manage to let your boys out of your sight to live their lives, knowing that they run the VERY FUCKING REAL risk of having their LIVES ENDED for having the audacity to walk down a street in a way that upset someone paler than they are, and 9 times out of 10, said pale person wouldn't catch jack shit for it. Because this isn't an isolated incident, y'all. I wish it was, but this shit's been happening almost every day since most of us brown folk got dragged here in chains. And you know what? It's pretty fucking rough just dealing with that day in and day out, just knowing if you slip up and take a shortcut through the wrong town at the wrong time,* it'll cost you in at best harassment, at worst grievous bodily harm, possibly including death. All because you happen to be somewhat more sun-resistant than Freckle McBlonderson over there. And then add the fact that you have to worry about your kids as well? Ffffffffuuuuuuucccccccck.

Y'all who never have to worry about this shit as you raise your kids? Give some serious fervent thanks to whatever power you hold dear that you don't, cause it sucks. And I'm not going to lie, tonight I resent your privilege in this department more than a little bit. Nope, no exceptions, sorry, I'm not writing any Black Friend Passes today and just as a heads up, the window may remain closed at least through the weekend. Too upset, and fuck you if you don't get why.

I'm not at all optimistic about there being any kind of positive outcome in this case, and it is almost a moot point because even if key people managed to get their collective heads out of their asses and some kind of legal justice was served, Trayvon is still horribly, senselessly dead. The media and the Internet being what they are, his death won't necessarily spark nearly enough outrage to really change anything either because in order to get people outside of the niche that is, say, #blacktwitter to give a shit about black boys dying, some white guys have to make a video about it and make it go viral. Bonus if they then get busted for drug use and public masturbation. That's what makes people pay attention. One sweet-faced teenager just getting his brother some candy and getting shot for his trouble? Well like I sad, Trayvon died on the 26th of February. Why did it take twenty damn days for this to get widespread press? Shit.

All I want to do right now is hug the stuffing out of my nephews and tell them I love them. And cry buckets that it's still so fucked up out there that shit like this can still happen and no one'll say boo, and even if someone does? deaf ears.

Wellp. Until next time, folks. Sadly, there will be one.



* seriously, look up "sundown towns" and "The Green Book" sometime. You'll learn stuff.

Why is it always the days when I'm busiest that I post the most?

Anyway I haven't said much about the Psychology Today dustup that happened recently, nor am I going to. Others have said it far more eloquently than I ever could. But between that and a couple of other things that have ignited the racial rage, I'm in seriously annoyed headspace. What I will do is post links, because the aforementioned more-eloquent-than-I people need to have their words read, as they are important.

You Keep Saying Black Women Are Ugly Worthless Whores And We Refuse To Believe You - karnythia's response to the PT ish

Why are Black women so gorgeous, resourceful, talented, intelligent and hated on?

Somewhat unrelated to the above, but in the same theme is "A Day at the Park" which... yeah, I can't. I choked up reading it. As someone who has gotten the occasional funny look at the playground/library when interacting directly with two particular short pale people, parts of this resonated a bit too hard for me. The rest... just... wow. Poor guy.


tl;dr - Racism sucks. In other news, bears shit in the woods, the Pope is Catholic, and the Terminator's been having secret love children with his political staffers. How's your day been? :/

I finished reading Seed to Harvest last night, which is the new omnibus edition of the Patternmaster series. I randomly ran across it in the library on my last trip down and thought what the hell, it's been long enough since I read these, and I need a break from the Giant Brick of Amber.

I've always loved Wild Seed. I still have my copy downstairs, signed by Ms. Butler herself in 2004 when she came to Smith to give a guest lecture on writing science fiction. I'm normally pretty meh about meeting famous people, but I remember going up to ask for her autograph that year and nearly peeing myself with frightened fangirl excitement. I think I blurted out not was she my hero, but that she was the second author ever to give me nightmares. (It's true. Kindred, which incidentally I can't find my ancient-ass copy of *RAGE* still scares the ever living crap out of me whenever I reread it.) She laughed. :)

I digress though. I loved the first half of the series (Wild Seed/Mind of my Mind) the first time around. I was less enthused about Clay's Ark and Patternmaster, I think because I couldn't relate to them the same way. They were both much better this go 'round. I probably had to grow up a bit more to appreciate them properly.

I was trying to explain to cell23 last night why I liked her writing so much, and I think my main argument was that her books are not comfortable reads. They are never happy fluffy tales of sunshine and roses; generally her main characters start at fucked and end up in oh shit!superfucked and what makes the story interesting is how they deal with their circumstances, either by fighting or accepting them. I can't think of a single story of hers that has a true happy ending beyond the protagonists finding some kind of inner peace, or victory or something, though the victories are often pyhrric. The other thing is when she writes about aliens interacting with humans (and a lot of her books do indeed deal with that) the aliens are ALIEN. They don't think like us, they are not driven by the same motivations, they are pretty much rational, talking monsters with their own agendas, and many of her novels end up exploring how humanity changes, adapts or stuggles to stay the same in the face of that. All pretty awesome things, I think.

I'm still upset that she died when she did. Aside from the weird irrational grief that happens when your idols die, it always felt like Fledgling was the start of something rather than a stand-alone story, and I was interested in seeing what further spins she'd put on the vampire genre. Of course, maybe that's a blessing in disguise, considering the ascension of the Sparklevampire.

Anyway. I'm still going through Amber, but I have also picked up Parable of the Sower to reread. It's another one I didn't particularly care for the first time around, I'm gonna see if my opinion has changed in the interim. And I need to make a mental note to pick up copies of the Xenogenesis series, which I don't have. Probably not the Lilith's Brood edition, as I liked having them in separate books. A perverse part of me wants to see if I can get my hands on the first editions of them with the horrible 1980s! Science! Fiction! typesetting and that insanely WTF cover for Dawn. Because there are so many white women with Farrah Fawcett hair named Lilith Iyapo. *giggle* Man. I would have loved to ask Ms. Butler what she thought of that after I read it. Alas I didn't get to that series until after she'd died. Oh, whitewashing.

But yeah... Butler's novels make me uncomfortable in another way that has nothing to do with her style or her stories. I get the same feeling of discomfort when I read Nalo Hopkinton or Tananarive Due, just this sense of "There aren't enough of us out there. Join Us. Write something. You can you know, you're just lazy." Seriously, it's sorta like Luke being constantly hounded by the blue ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi whenever he feels like whining about his life. Except I'm being haunted by the blue ghosts of black female science fiction/fantasy writers. No mean feat considering only one of the ones I've mentioned is actually dead, and the other two are on my twitter feed. Between that and Stanley basically telling me for the umpteenth time to get up off my proverbial ass and write stuff other than my constant "this is my life" drivel... yeah about that.



In other news, oh hey what's up snow. Also: Love me, love me, say that you love me.


Get your own valentinr

Mostly posted because I thought them trying to hammer Kiera Knightley's face into an anime profile funny. But seriously.

I'm copying telepresence's post on the subject in its entireity cause he pretty much summed it up quite well:

Were you, like me, feeling conflicted about seeing The Last Airbender? Welp, apparently the pressure is off, because the movie is crap.

Last I checked it's at 10 percent at Rotten Tomatoes. The tacked-on 3-D is supposedly terrible, the action is tepid, and the acting terrible.

It's actually down to 7% and presumably falling.

A sampling of pull quotes:

"The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

"The Last Airbender is a joyless, soulless, muddled mess," - Christy Lemire, Associated Press

"This colossal folly, the fiasco of the summer of 2010 — gives us all a ringside seat at the sight of Mr. “I See Dead People’s” career gurgling down the drain." - Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

"The Last Airbender is dreadful, an incomprehensible fantasy-action epic that makes the 2007 film The Golden Compass, a similarly botched adaptation of a beloved property from another medium, look like a four-star classic." - Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Also, on top of the dodgy racial issues that have dogged the movie since the cast was revealed, apparently it sucks for gender too, with no Suki, no Kyoshi Warriors, and most of Katara's top moments either excised (no fight between Katara and Master Pakku for her right to train with boys) or given to Aang. Bleah.

Ah well, there's always the DVDs of the original show.

Yeah, wow. I think Hollywood just invented Failbending, lol. And, as one of telepresence's friends pointed out, when's the last time you enjoyed something getting as savaged by the critics to this extreme of a level? (When was Uwe Boll's last movie?)

I'm going to go over here and relish my schadenfreude sandwich now.