anagram of brat

I've been trying to think of a good way to explain exactly why I raged all over FB last week regarding the sea of red equal signs. What was it about that particular phenomenon that tipped me over from my usual practiced political apathy (or at least silence) into snarly Fuck y'alls?

( blah blah blah de blah de blah )

And THAT'S why I got so fucking pissy last week. I'm not sure I've really expressed myself any better here and now and I'm quite sure I'm just pissing everyone off again, but I did say I would try.

And now... gotta go make some chicken fried rice.

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.

The fun thing about life changes for me is that I suddenly am filled with the hunger to DO ALL THE CREATIVE THINGS. Which is hilarious, because generally when my life takes a shift like that, it generally means that I have less time for creative stuff, not more. But for the little while where I have the shiny happy New Thing Energy*, I get ideas for projects and desires to do things. Granted these rarely come to any sort of fruition due to a lack of focus, but for a few weeks at least I actually want to do stuff as opposed to just feeling meh about everything.

I've got creative stuff on the burner, of course. I still have to cast The Witch off the loom, and soon because I want to start the next project and it needs to be done by Kidzilla's birthday, and that's not including her other birthday present which I've started working on as well. But on top of that I've been feeling the fever. I want to dance again, like not just go dancing, but go back to belly dance class and start really working on that again. I want to take moar pictures... and of other things besides trees, cats and kids. I'm finding I miss having someone willing to let me point a camera at them on a regular basis that's well over the age of seven, but considering the grief people have given me in the past for wanting to take their picture and my own lack of confidence in my abilities/camera, I'm kinda too self conscious to ask anyone I know about taking pictures of them (though I do seem to remember standing offers from aersi and htl_1126, which I'll have to cash in on sometime).

Oddly enough, something I've been turning over in my head is a partly overheard conversation between a few members of our company before burlesque about acceptable male body types, where it was posited that there are in fact only two that fit the criteria of "pleasing" either the skinny willowy gothboy type, or that insanely jacked cut-muscle beefcake type. See Joe Manganiello from True Blood or Chris Hemsworth from Thor. I think I know one guy that looks like the latter, but he's a dancer and is in the gym or the studio quite literally all damn day. I know maybe one person that conforms to tall willowy goth boy, but again, there was a lot of overzealous gym work to maintain that. (Being in the Air Force don't hurt none either.) Pretty much the rest of my male associates have/have had every single body type in between, though for the most part they tend to burliness of varying density. Some are widely considered beautiful, as it applies to guys anyway. Others aren't quite but have either a combination of compelling features overlaid with a cubic shitfuck of charisma. Still others still have something about them, but have alas been relegated both by outside voices and internal monologue to the ugly box. All this said, I can't think of a single person I know personally (that includes all of you reading this, by the way) that identifies as male that didn't have something I considered beautiful/aesthetically pleasing about them. A lot of you are handsomer than you realize, you know.

It was very much a concept that stuck in my head while watching the burlesque show, actually. I was on some level paying attention to the crowd reactions to the various acts and I've pretty much concluded that boobs seem to have universal appeal, no matter the size and shape. The two acts by the male guest performers, as expected, got somewhat less of a crowd reaction, considering the straight male contingent of the audience for the most part seemed awkward about expressing... appreciation? for their acts, and if they did it was for the humor of them and less for the physical attributes of the men performing. (Not that there was anything wrong there. Sirlesque ain't exactly my type, but they were pretteh.)

I don't know, I'm sure there's an argument for masculine body types/image, but it's gonna take someone far more eloquent than I to express it properly, I think. The entry got away from me a bit, honestly. At this point I kinda want to go watch The Full Monty in a fit of pique though.

I did have a greater point here, tying back to my whole CREATIVE EXPRESSION = VERY YES thing, but what I'd love to do is both find and take pictures of men. Not "models" or the type that Planet Fitness cheerfully derides as "lunkheads," just regular, real guys that still have a whole lot of a certain something that someone managed to catch on "film" or is willing to let me try. Alas, I'm quite sure the former is ridiculously hard to find, and the latter, well. I have yet to meet one of you male-identified types that wasn't also viciously camera shy, for all of the reasons poorly expressed above. Also see the part where camera = nerd repellent.

Eh, it was something twirling around my brain today, since I did promise yesterday that I'd post about it at some future point.

In other news, its cold and rainy in MA today, neither of which I'm complaining too hard about. Rainy means happy tomatoes, cold means happy Andee that doesn't mind getting glomphed at night. And the fact that it's this cold in August feels like a rare delicious treat. Also I had to nip into Target for a moment today and MY GOD IT IS BACK TO SCHOOL SEASON BAN ME FROM STAPLES NOW FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY.



* Its actually not entirely unlike New Relationship Energy actually - the spillover effect is much the same.

This is gonna be one of those entries where I lose friends on all sides of the spectrum. SO BE IT.

( RANTING AHOY. Considering it's regarding the PA Dickwolves drama, triggery like whoa )

ETA: non friend commentary screened. I'm not interested in outside wankery on this.

ETA2: ehh never mind i just locked the post from further comments. I realize thats probably going to piss folk off moar and violates my usual policy of encouraging people to tell me when i'm wrong, but upon thinking about it, i realize i don't have my usual level of trollface and popcorn interest in seeing which of my friends are on what side (i'm pretty sure i know where y'all stand by now) and having you cockfight it out. Also, this is the blue moon occasion where i'm off the fence i usually ride like a prize stallion and am pretty solid in how i feel about it. For whatever its worth, it seems like a flounce/chickenshit/fuck you move even to me, lol. But whatever. Its not like if you really want to talk to me about this you don't know where and how to get a hold of me. I just dont want to do it here. Interpret that as you will, i suppose.

Fuck your so called "delicious cake."

a) the cake is and always was a goddamn LIE. Tired old meme or not, in this case it applies. Any cake there was to be had was mine and if anyone ran away with it giggling, it was you.

b) I don't need your goddamn vegan gluten free treehugging hippie cake, so roll it up, shove it up your ass and light it on fire. My dollar ninety nine betty crocker shit tastes so much better it's not even funny. But I'm sure that self-righteous smugma (not a typo) you and the others bukakked all over it by way of frosting tastes like... something.

c) "delicious cake" is another term for severely underage jailbait. Research your metaphors before using them.

Thank you, move along.

And no, I'm not explaining, so don't ask. No exceptions.

When I really really think about it, I don't really know why I like watching SVU. I mean, other than the man candy (Mmmm, Chris Meloni... BD Wong.... Adam Beach... Hell even Ice -T cleans up well in this show...), the fact that I love me both some Mariska Hargitay and her character Olivia, and the fact that it's pretty snappily written dialogue-wise (I'm still really sorry they reduced Munch's role in later seasons; he has some of the best and funniest lines in season 1 so far), if a little slavishly devoted to formula. All of which are good things, mind, but at the same time? it's a show that deals with some pretty damn rough material every week to the point where I've made reference to the "how many showers do you need to take after watching?" system of rating episodes.

Also? TRIGGERY SHIT AHOY. And it's not even the big stuff that gets under my skin, I can safely say I'm fairly desensitized to that (which is a rant for someone and someplace else). It's the little things. Like how in response to someone wondering why anyone would allow an 8 year old to walk to a comic book shop down the street unaccompanied in New York, a standard out-of-towner concern, Munch shoots back with "Watch over them 24 hours a day you end up with safe little neurotics." Gee, whom does that describe to a tee? *sigh* 'Course in my case "safe" is debatable, but I've already made THAT whole big long post. Oh yeah, not like this show doesn't poke me in that particular trigger a lot as well.

And occasionally something will hit me in the STOP PISSING ME OFF. One gradual change to the show I'm actually kind of glad about is that they quit focusing and playing off the Stabler = married man with 4 (later 5) kids vs Benson = single and childless woman and how their job affects them in those contexts. The fact that they hew very close to stereotype, especially in season one, aside... GAH. I have all kinds of problems with that particular setup that I don't really have time to rant about, but I'm only on frakking episode 8 of season 1 and Stabler has told Benson no less than three times this season that she's incapable of understanding x, y, and z because she doesn't have children.

*growl*

Okay, you know what, I get that there may indeed some truth to that statement; having never had the miraculous brain transmutation that apparently happens when you become a parent, I'm really in no place to speculate on "before" and "after" states. But considering various people have seen fit to say this to me in various tones of voice and degrees of smugness pretty much since my nephew was born a legal drinking age ago, hearing it in any context is going to make me want to pull out the nearest spleen with my bare hands and vengefully eat it, because it's almost always said with the intent of instantly silencing the non-parent from daring to offer a differing opinion from a parent regarding their children, whether it's how they are raised, what their environment may be, what effect an action you take may have on them, etc. etc. Bottom line? I've maybe had it said to me once in a way where I could honestly say "yeah, you're right, I probably wouldn't get that." The rest? Pretty much directly translated to "STFU/STFD until you pop out some kids, then have an opionion." My response? "Fuck you."

Like I said, it's the little shit that gets to me. I think I'm going to have to put on something a little lighter from my Netflix queue for a while to keep from defenestrating my monitor. Also more coffee.

So a while back? I think sometime in the beginning of August? when the kerfuffle over the OMG OHNOES A MUSLIM CENTER ON GROUND ZERO GET IN THE CAR started to reach full raging force, I popped open semagic and started just ...RANTING about the whole situation. I lost steam halfway through, but saved the entry and put it away thinking I may dust it off later.

I reread it just now, and it wasn't nearly as nonsensical as I thought. A few lapses in logic, a few instances of repetition, but... I don't know. There's enough raw WTF??? present that I think it warrants posting as this year's obligatory 9/11 post. I did a little editing here and there and brought it up to date, but for the most part, left the stream of consciousness feel to it intact.

( cut for ranting, Warren Ellis-esque swearing and utter disgust with certain people )

In case the last few posts haven't made it obvious, I've been thinking about the whole needs vs wants thing again... and it's dredging up a fair amount of upsetting but important realizations about my own decision making process. I have some pretty good ideas about how all this may have started, and specific ways I have chosen to let this particular disconnect in my head fuck me over, but it's all BS and steam at this point, and more importantly it's in a past I can't fix. I can fix the present and the future.

Some things to think about:

Just because you can do without something you need doesn't mean you don't need it. I posted this yesterday and I am posting it again today because this idea needs to be grokked and cherished and made my squishy. I think I took an idea meant to be applied to material crap and impulse purchases and applied it wholesale to everything, with all kinds of charming emotionally damaged results. The other thing that this sort of attitude doesn't address is that this sort of thing builds up, and constantly denying myself something important nearly always rises up to bite me in the ass later. And I'm coming to realize just how much I do deny myself shit... and for no real good reason.

Avoiding a label is not a good reason to deny myself something I need. You would not believe how much BS I go through and have gone through just to avoid being labeled either "crazy" or "high maintenance" or "weak." The problem with that is that squeaky wheels get all the grease, and I'm more the type that will grimly push on without any sort of lubricant until I start warping ball bearings and by that time you're looking at wheel replacement, not wheel maintenance. Because the way it seems to work is that if I don't squeak, nothing ever happens cause other people tend to be at least self absorbed enough that if you aren't squeaking, they assume everything is fine and leave you alone. Which isn't what I want or need and nine times out of ten it gives me something else to stew about.

It's a more constructive use of my own energy to work on getting said needs addressed and met rather than resenting those with the wherewithall to do so. Because taking the moral high road may make me feel self-righteous, but it's still not getting my shit covered.

Related to the above, remember, the "nice" people finish last. Take some example from people in the present and the past and learn to be ruthless about this when you need to be. 19 times out of 20 other people aren't going to bother taking my needs into consideration when doing what is best for them, up to and including deceit, lying, cheating, stealing and throwing tantrums. I'm not saying I want to become a total amoral asshole or anything, but waiting for others to do right by me has worked so damn well in the past, you know? Other people can and will take care of themselves, so I need to spend a little less time considering them and a little more time considering me and mine. And not waste time feeling horrible about occasionally doing something underhanded to get that accomplished.

No one does this alone. So I really need to stop trying to be such a rock and an iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisland, and I shouldn't be so goddamn disgusted with/ashamed of myself when I admit I need something. I am so paranoid of being a needy inconvenience that it's easier to hide than open up. All I do is just cut off any avenue of support I have when the going gets tough and for what? No one gets where they are by them damn selves. Every successful person has either willing accomplices or clueless suckers to support them somehow. You'd think I would have gotten that idea through my head years ago when I found out one of our class summa cum laudes had various people doing her classwork for her. I don't know how I got so allergic to support, but I need to fucking stop that. And I need to fucking stop supporting everyone and their mama without getting anything back, cause honestly that already almost killed me twice. I keep going like this, I'm going to end up back in the hospital and not leave.


TLDR version: I'm very good at brave fronts, but honestly this particular fairy is about out of dust across the board. Clapping and cheerleading of any and all descriptions is sorely appreciated right now.

So roomie asked a friend to fix her computer for her a while back, and she just got it back from the friend... with Ubuntu instead of XP.

Okay, you know what? I work with computers. I am as annoyed by microsoft as much as the next person. I tend to use open source stuff because I can't really afford to shell out good money for the proprietary shit. Sometimes it's a great thing. (Huzzah for Open office!) Sometimes it's a horrible tale of pain and woe (I hated Scribus with a fiery passion unmatched by god or man). But you know what? Fuck that noise if someone asks you to fix their computer, you fix it and try to get it back the way they found it, don't just go and change the OS just because you see Microsoft as the Man. Especially not when the person you are fixing it for is more than a little OCD about how they like their things arranged. You get a computer with XP on it, you give it back with XP, goddamn it.

Currently listening to her totally tech support calling this person because she doesn't know where anything is. Also FAIL on giving her the password she needs to get INTO the fucking computer now.

ANDEESMASH.

Apparently this person is coming down to help her with it on thursday. Which is great because I've been wanting an excuse to break in that PVC pipe I bought a couple weeks ago....

ETA: Here have some hot 365 action: