Sophianotloren

This week I’m turning 48. I’m definitely well into midlife — and it’s not a crisis. In fact, I’ve felt more comfortable and at peace with myself over the last few years than ever in my life. Embracing being solo poly definitely has had a lot to do with it.

We all only have a limited time on this planet. None of us know how limited. Personally, I think it’s important to allow my authentic self emerge as much as possible in my time here. Because if I can’t be authentic, then I can’t honestly and deeply experience or share joy.

And without joy, what’s the point of life? Whether your joy derives from pleasure, achievement, service, understanding, learning, or peace — if you can’t see, accept, like and love yourself as you are, you probably won’t be able to offer much meaningful connection to others.

People constantly evolve, so who you are (and who I am) are constant works in progress. We’re all in a position to keep discovering ourselves.

We all influence each other as well, directly and indirectly. The part of polyamory I treasure most is that it allows me to let people into my life, and my heart, on as deep a level that feels right to everyone involved. To experiment with boundaries and engagement. To allow ourselves to be forever changed by contact.

Balancing that out, solohood keeps me grounded. It reminds me not to lean so heavily on partners that I stop seeing them for who they are (and how they are changing). For me, when the fabric of my daily life becomes too enmeshed with a partner, it’s tempting to start seeing them as an extension of myself. And that doesn’t bring out my best qualities, as a person or a partner. (Or as a metamour, for that matter.)

Sitting here today on the deck of my mountain cabin, sipping tea in the early morning sunshine, hearing hummingbirds and breeze-rustled aspen leaves, I like who I have evolved to become. I like the independent life I’ve consciously crafted. I value the interdependencies, intimacies and vulnerabilities I’ve chosen. None of it is perfect, and I wouldn’t want it to be; I learn little from perfection.

I’m humbled to have had the opportunity and privilege to have lots of choices in life, and to mostly live and connect with others as I see fit. I don’t want to take that for granted. For as long as I keep living, I want to keep growing. I don’t ever want to live, or love, on autopilot — even when that’s scary, risky or painful. It’s my greatest hope to be good to people, including myself. To tread consciously, and sometimes to dance with joy and grace.

When the reaper comes for me, I’ll know I have really lived. I woke up several years ago and saw where I was, who I was, and who’s around me — and I let them in, let them flow though me. The flexibility and resilience of solo polyamory has helped me feel my life and embrace others more fully, without tightly clinging to how anyone (including me) is “supposed” to be. Some people brush me lightly, others infuse me profoundly. And I them. I savor the mutual marination of life.

And for this, I am grateful.

As age advances, I know I may not always enjoy such independence. I’m considering that, considering what kinds of interdependencies might work best as my needs and capabilities change. I don’t see aging as a loss or degradation; just a change in what I have to offer, and what I may experience. A mixed bag, as is all of life. I’m trying to arrange my life to keep my options open, and to connect with friends, lovers and family in sustaining and sustainable ways. To focus on options, not specific outcomes. Not being tied to a specific vision how my life and the people in it should be enhances that process.

Should I have the honor of becoming an old, old woman, I think I’ll be pretty damn good at it.

… but I occasionally freshen up my zombie apocalypse survival plans, just in case.

“Why?” my husband used to ask me, “Must you bloody your head against every wall?”  “Why?” friends sometimes asked me, “Are you always tilting at windmills?”

Fine.  “Q” is for quixotic, although I am seriously hating the definition: “Exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical” — and that is the most positive one I found.  Others dismiss anything under that heading as “rash, impulsive, foolhardy”.  Right.  Well, fuck them, ok?

Unlike Cervantes’ poor knight of La Mancha, I’m not mad and doing battle with windmills that I see as giants, thank you very much.  But I do bloody my head on the occasional brick wall — usually one I think should NOT be there at all.  Walls, and if I were in the work force now?  That fucking glass ceiling shining down on female heads.  And the religious ceiling of patriarchal religions that reduce my use to bearing children and cooking.  There is no shortage of things that need knocked down — and if my body and life are all I have to throw at the barriers facing humanity and the world?  So be it.

I frankly do not believe that being exceedingly idealist IS unrealistic and impractical.  I think people get told that every time they try to change some fucked up status quo.  I think the word ‘quixotic’ is used to hammer us down every time we get ready to ERASE some line that should never have been there at all.  I think both the pagan world and the natural world (if they are separate?) could use a few more folks willing to go several rounds with corporate windmills, with wild hearts full of idealism and fight.

So hey, armor up!

Tagged: activism, idealism, pagan blog project

Which is the odd man out?

Now, who won the election for Public Defender in the 25th Judicial District?

Yep, it’s pro-death penalty, 7-year prosecutor Bo Burk, who, if you zoom in on the image, touts his membership in the NRA as a plus to be the champion of individual rights for the poor and disenfranchised.

But as if that wasn’t enough, he is also a fiscal conservative who will use all resources available to save taxpayer dollars.

Perhaps since he’s never represented a criminal defendant in his life, he might be confused as to where the government largesse in the criminal justice system comes from: it is from over-criminalization and vindictive prosecutions, excessive prison sentences and lengthy terms of probation.

It isn’t the job of a public defender to worry about how much money is being spent on defense. In fact, if anything, the reality is that indigent defense organizations are criminally underfunded and could use significantly greater numbers of lawyers and investigators to provide constitutionally adequate defenses.

Of course, none of this mentions the greater philosophical problem: the stewardship of individual rights and defenses of poor people left to a man who, just yesterday, was trying to put those very people in jail.

How exactly will that prosecutorial mindset so quickly convert to one of defending rights at all costs? How will he suddenly bring himself to the attitude required of criminal defense attorneys: that whether the client actually committed a crime is often irrelevant; what matters is whether the prosecution can prove it?

It would also seem that in a jurisdiction like his, there may be a significant number of people dealing with mental health and drug addiction issues – topics that prosecutors are usually skeptical of. Can he immediately shed that skepticism and see these defendants for what they are – people who are in trouble and need help?

Logic dictates that the defendants of the 25th Judicial District in Tennessee are in for some worse times. Reality dictates that Bo Burk will continue to get elected, despite his complete lack of qualifications for the job.

 

by Amin Ghaziani

What are we to make of the many anxieties that surround the alleged demise of iconic gay neighborhoods like the Castro in San Francisco? The media, including The New Yorker (here), Salon (here), Time magazine (here), Huffington Post (here), BBC Radio 4 (here), Yahoo News (here), and the Advocate (here), have all taken a keen interest in this hot-button topic.

In the course of conducting research for my new book (here), I discovered an astonishing diversity of queer spaces. Researchers, however, emphasize the experiences of gay men, and in doing so, they erase the lives of lesbians. To set the stage, consider the words of sociologist Manuel Castells. “Lesbians, unlike gay men,” he says, “tend not to concentrate in a given territory.” He thinks that they “do not acquire a geographical basis.” Gender differences between men and women are to blame. “Men have sought to dominate,” Castells continues, “and one expression of this domination has been spatial.” On the other hand, “women have rarely had these territorial aspirations.” For gay men – as men – “to liberate themselves from cultural and sexual oppression, they need a physical space from which to strike out.” Lesbians – as women – “tend to create their own rich, inner world and a political relationship with higher, societal levels.” This perspective leads Castells to conclude that “they are ‘placeless.’”

I disagree.

Lesbian geographies exist. Sometimes they overlap with the more visible, gay men dominated districts—but they are also quite distinct, as the following table illustrates:

Table 4. Highest Zip Code Concentrations of Gay Men and Lesbians

This table shows that lesbians do in fact cluster. Although they share some of the same areas with men (Provincetown, Rehoboth Beach, and the Castro), they more often live in less urban areas. All of their neighborhoods are less concentrated overall than those of gay men.

Why does this happen? Some scholars, like Castells, argue that gay men and lesbians have different needs to control space, and this makes lesbians placeless. The table above challenges this view.

Others stress women’s lack of economic power. Although the gender wage gap has narrowed, women still earn, on average, less than men across the board (77% of what men earn, as of 2010). The table confirms that women households are located in lower-income areas.

Subcultural differences also matter. Men are more influenced by sexual transaction and building commercial institutions, while women are motivated by feminism and countercultures. Lesbian neighborhoods consist of clusters of homes near progressive organizations that existed in the area before they even arrived—like artsy theaters, alternative bookstores, coffee shops, bike shops, and cooperative grocery stores. This gives lesbian districts a quasi-underground character, makes them seem hidden, and thus makes them harder to find for those who are not in the know.

Family formation is an important part of the landscape as well. Women same-sex partner households are more likely to have children, and so they have different needs for housing.

Related to this are preferences for city life. Lesbians are also more likely to elect rural locations, gay men choose bigger metropolises.

Finally, some lesbians reject gay neighborhoods because they find them unwelcoming. Gay men are still men, after all, and they are not exempt from sexism.

These reasons may circumscribe lesbian territoriality, but they do not negate it. On the contrary, lesbians are “canaries in the urban coal mine,” to borrow from sociologist Sharon Zukin (here), and they often augur economic and cultural changes that a neighborhood will eventually experience.

Amin Ghaziani is associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia. 

Filed under: Sexualities, Space & Place, Uncategorized

Trying to pick answers for password security questions can be a traumatizing experience.

Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry.  –  Aristotle

Maeve resisted the urge to hurl the abacus against the far wall of the library.  It might have given her a little momentary satisfaction, but it would do nothing to remedy the situation and would, in fact, make it slightly worse because she would then have to buy another abacus.  She had carefully checked her figures three times, and found no errors; for the first time since she had become a courtesan, her expenditures for the month had exceeded her income.  And given that she had been cutting back on those expenditures for over a year now, that was a very bad development indeed.

She hastened to her looking-glass and closely examined her face in it.  She was still a very beautiful woman, but the encroaching signs of age were unmistakable and even the expensive cosmetics she purchased from a talented alchemist could only delay the inevitable.  Sooner or later she would begin to display the grey hair and wrinkles she had evaded for decades, and then her income would dry up along with her body.  Maeve sighed deeply; she was not an especially wise woman nor a frugal one, and though she had known for half her life that this day would eventually come, she had failed to make even the most rudimentary investments for her retirement.  And while most women could count on children and grandchildren to support them in their dotage, Maeve had traded away her ability to have them many years ago, in a bargain that seemed sensible at the time.  Her only hope was the Potion of Youth that the alchemist said he could make for her, but its price was so high she dared not spend the money unless she was absolutely certain it would buy her many years of good income again.

No, she was in a fine stew indeed, and thinking her way out of things had never been her strong point.  So she instead retired to her private shrine to Venus and began to pray for either divine inspiration or (preferably) a new and generous patron who would consider her maturity a plus rather than a minus.  When she was finished with her prayers, she found her maid Elise waiting for her in the anteroom with a rather odd look on her face.  “Ma’am, you have a visitor downstairs.”

“How wonderful!  Perhaps the goddess has answered my prayer already!”

Elise’s mien grew even stranger, but Maeve did not notice; she was already halfway down the stairs in less time than it takes to tell, and her maid appeared in no rush to keep up with her.  Reaching the door to her parlor, she took a moment to check her hair and teeth in another glass, then swept gracefully into the room in a way calculated to impress any but the dullest of clients.  It is a testament to her years of experience that she did not gasp out loud when she saw who was waiting for her in the room, but no mortal could have kept at least a momentary reaction from being reflected in her visage.  Because seated on the couch, drinking her tea and eating her cakes, was someone she at first took to be a very small boy until she realized that he had a beard.

He immediately stood up and bowed deeply; even though he was standing on the couch, his head was yet below the level of her bosom when he returned to an upright position.  “Allow me to introduce myself, dear lady; I am Ulwin O’Meglyn.”

The room grew quiet for a moment; Maeve was completely at a loss for words.  And even when she found her tongue at last, what came forth would not have won marks for elocution.  “Unless I very much miss my guess, good sir, you are a leprechaun.”

“I am not!” he said with controlled indignation.  “I am a brownie.  Leprechauns are about six inches taller and generally dress in tasteless green outfits, though I must admit they make some very fine shoes.”

Maeve was beginning to wonder what she could possibly have done to offend her goddess enough to deserve this joke being played upon her.  “Good Sir Brownie…”

“Ulwin, please.”

“Ulwin.  I apologize for my reaction, but, ah, I expected a different kind of visitor.  If you are seeking a position here, I would be happy to have you under the traditional arrangement.”

The little man looked at her with a rather annoyed expression.  “Madam, it is clear that you are rather ill-informed about developments in the relations between our races over the past several generations.  While it is true that in the past most of my people worked as servants in human households and refused to take formal payment, that has long since ceased to be the rule; I am the owner of an agency which places brownies in service in the very best households in the kingdom.  And as you can see, I have done quite well for myself.”

Now that he mentioned it, Maeve noticed that his clothes were impeccably tailored and his hat, boots and walking-stick new and of the finest craftsmanship.  “Pardon my ignorance, Sir Brownie…”

“Ulwin.”

“Ulwin.  I’m not especially interested in hiring additional paid servants at this time, but if I change my mind…”

“Dear lady, at the risk of being indelicate…I am not here to offer the services of those I represent, but to hire your services.”

Maeve could not help but laugh, though she had no desire to offend the polite little gentleman.  “You must forgive me, sir, but…well, it seems the difference in our statures might make that sort of activity rather difficult.”

“You disappoint me, madam.  Surely you do not think me a schoolboy who considers mere coupling to be the be-all and end-all of the time a man spends with a woman?”

For the first time, she realized he was absolutely earnest; exactly three seconds later, she began to consider his proposition.  She cautiously sat down beside him; he was still shorter than her despite the fact that he was standing on the seat.  “You’re serious?”

“Utterly.”

“But, don’t I seem…well, rather huge and grotesque in your eyes?”

“I would not be here if I felt that way.”

“I suppose not.  But why…I mean, how…that is…”

“I hardly thought I would have had to explain the strange mysteries of humanoid desire to an expert in the field.”

Maeve knew he was right; there was no predicting what strange permutations would arouse the ardor of one man or another, and in her many years of experience she had found that no less true of dwarves, elves or other near-human people.  And it was obvious he had a great deal of money; perhaps Venus had heard her prayer after all.  “Your suggestions intrigue me, Ulwin,” she purred in her most charming manner; “Let me pour you some more tea and we’ll discuss it further.”

His smile let her know that she had already dispelled whatever bad feelings her clumsy and unprofessional reactions had engendered, and as they chatted she envisioned a profitable association with him and perhaps other little men who might share his tastes.  Nor was that the limit of the possibilities his visit had opened her mind to; one of her regular gentlemen had told her that only two days’ ride into the mountains, there was a village of friendly giants.

New t-shirt design!

littlebird24:

memeguy-com:

There is no good and evil there is only power

this just this

More job satisfaction.

Illustrator and designer Akihiro Mizuuchi designed a modular system for creating edible chocolate LEGO bricks. Chocolate is first poured into precisely designed moulds that after cooling can be popped out and used as regular LEGOs. It’s hard to determine exactly how functional they are, it seems like he had success in building a number of different things, though I can only imagine how quickly they might melt in your hands, but I suppose that’s beside the point; this is two of the greatest things in the world fused together. If you google around there are numerous attempts at creating various forms of LEGO in chocolate or other food, but this appears to be the most detailed and well-designed of anything out there. (via Legosaurus)

I don’t live in one of Connecticut’s big cities anymore. I used to, but I don’t. I live in a residential neighborhood that is decidedly middle-class. I have a dog and I often walk that dog on my street and the streets nearby, as middle-class suburban folk are wont to do.

Last week, after our supreme court issued its opinion and while I was in the midst of getting indignant and demanding that people pay attention, I went for a walk. And it was heavenly. I forgot about everything. I forgot about the anger. I forgot about the frustration. I looked at the trees, neighbors’ yards and their flower gardens. I heard dogs barking from windows, I saw birds at bird feeders. I said hello to a few neighbors mowing their lawns. A man stopped to pet my dog. I smiled at him. I politely made way for some kids bicycling.

It was great. It was serene. It was peaceful.

It was horrible. I forgot all about Jeremy Kelly. I forgot all about Michael Morton. I forgot all about Cameron Todd Willingham. I forgot all about Troy Davis. I forgot all about the sad mentally challenged client who had fondled his younger cousin and who was now going to a very bad place that he would no doubt be completely unable to navigate. I forgot all about the hundreds of drug addicted individuals who were inartfully balancing that fine line between treatment and prison. I forgot all about the innocent man who had been arrested and locked up for weeks, the investigation of whose case had stalled. I forgot all about the institutional racism. I forgot all about prosecutorial misconduct. I forgot all about Trayvon Martin. I forgot all about the NSA and the CIA. Everything was right with the world. It was peaceful, happy, just.

From my stupor, it was easy to see how 5 wizened justices would rule that, of course, officer safety would trump the minor incursion into an individual’s Right to Suspicionless Assembly. Of course, in my neighborhood, if I saw one person up to no good, then his friend was also in on the scam. That’s the way of the world. It was white and black. It made perfect sense.

It felt great.

I hated myself. I hated myself because it was so easy. Because it was so tempting. There was nothing to slipping into that coma of blissful ignorance. I could abandon this career and never have to test my conscience again. I could walk away and never have to justify my principles again. I could take the easy path: the path of apathy. The path of following well-trod progressive trails. I could stick to the easy causes: health care, education, marriage equality. They were hard, but they weren’t controversial. It would be easy. It would be serene. It would be relaxing.

I think about that today. Michael Brown would be forgotten. Ferguson would be forgotten. Dr. King would be a token I would pay infrequent homage to. Leave it all behind and embrace my privilege. I could devote my life to Shark Week and Kim Kardashian. The Central Park Five, The Angola Four, Renisha McBride, that Lockett fellow with the horrible death by lethal injection would all run together as post-it notes to be called upon to appear informed and tut-tut the anomalous shortcomings of our otherwise truly fine institutions. But really, there would be no need to worry. There would be no need to fret. My rights aren’t really going anywhere. No cop is shooting at me 5 times. They aren’t detaining me on the street just because of who I’m standing next to. It would be so easy to wrap myself in that cocoon of privilege and turn up the apathy to 11.

It would be a lie. It would be a betrayal. It would make me a coward. If I only express support for easy causes, then I have no real principles. If I only investigate “trendy” issues, then I am nothing but a fraud. Activism, contributing to society and making a difference are meaningful only if you’re doing more than greasing the wheels that are running fine without your presence.

The easy path isn’t always the right path. I am privileged in many ways, but the people I stand up for, the causes that make me wake up every morning and shout at others for ignoring are causes that affect all of us. Those with privilege and those without. And every day that you let your apathy stand in the way of the protections that I deserve, I will smack you in the face and remind you that you’re part of the problem.

Your rights are my rights. Pay attention, because I don’t want to lose them any time soon just because you’ve decided that you’re too white or middle-class to be bothered.

Last night, in Ferguson, Missouri, police in riot gear entered residential neighbourhoods and lobbed teargas, flash bombs, rubber bullets, and noise cannons (also known as LRAD or Long Range Acoustic Devices) at people who were gathered peacefully to protest the killing of an unarmed 18-year-old, Michael Brown, by a still un-identified policeman. I watched the livestreams of video being tweeted out by reporters and bystanders. Not much has changed in America, I thought; it’s just that now, the police are using the equipment that the military has deployed in wars, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, on American civilians. And the wars waged on those who are portrayed as threatening, dangerous Others — be they young, black men, or America’s new Other, Arabs and Muslims — is always two pronged: there is the militarized violence, and there is the cultural propaganda used to justify that violence. That second part of the war is partially waged through narrative — talk show hosts’ incendiary rhetoric and politicians’ carefully managed speeches — but in the 2000s, it also comes through visual mediums: television, images in print and online media, and now, more than ever, social media. Just think of the picture you conjure up the moment you hear about a black person meeting a violent end: a gangster (yes, that picture) who had it coming. As Linda Sarsour (‏‪@lsarsour) noted on Twitter, “Previous arrests and low level criminal records first to surface when young unarmed black men are shot by police.”

In the past week, ever since the police murder of Michael Brown, many Americans have been focusing on the need to change the conversation around the way young, black men are viewed by police, mainstream media, and white people. One of the most striking attempts has come from those young, black men themselves, who’ve been tweeting dual, contrasting portrait photos under the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. Begun by Twitter user @CJ_Musick_Lawya, these tweets (all of which are now being collected and posted on Tumblr)‪ consist of two elements: the diptych of photographs and a text of 140 characters or less. In each diptych, one photograph depicts the young man that all suburban mothers want their sons to be: freshly shorn, well-groomed, posing with elderly people, a puppy, or a classical musical instrument. The other is the one you worry your son wants to emulate, or your daughter will date on the sly: the young man wearing a sports jersey and low-riders, looks somewhat unkempt, his arms maneuvered into elaborate angles and fingers fashioned into some mysterious sign.

These sets of contrasting images may seem simplistic, didactic, or like they’re trying too hard. But they resonated with people around the world. #IfTheyGunnedMeDown was at the top of Twitter’s list of trending hashtags this past week.

Most who posted these tweets, like D. Corleone (@Dakari_Hill), asked followers a direct question: “#IfTheyGunnedMeDown Which pic would they use? The thug on the left or the 4.0 GPA scholar on the right?” Similarly, Randy S. Henley (@SKYYorRocky) asked, “#IfTheyGunnedMeDown would they show hugging my dad as a first generation college grad or when I drank like most kids.” Others, like BlackHistoryStudies ‏‪(@BlkHistStudies) used the hashtag to educate, reflect, and theorize: “Why The ‪#IfTheyGunnedMeDown Hashtag Proves Racism Exists Long After Someone Dies.”

A Twitter user named Aayan (‏‪@Yung_PopEYE) kept to the original, simple refrain — “#IfTheyGunnedMeDown what pic would the news use?” — but accompanied it with an especially eloquent diptych. Photograph 1 is evidently a selfie, a grainy phone close-up, shot in yellow indoor light. We see that Aayan is bare chested, in order to better display a massive tattoo splashed across his entire thorax region: a detailed, menacing skull sprouting two angelic wings. Above it, in decorative script, the legend: “Live life with no regrets just lessons learned.” (The words are actually impossible to decipher in the selfie, so I tweeted and asked him.) His head is covered by a woolen cap, branded with a machine-embroidered Houston Texans logo. A wide band of smooth gold flows down his neck, detouring a little at his collarbone. But what incriminates him most? Aayan is baring his lips in order to display a mouth full of metal: both his upper and lower teeth are adorned by “grillwork” (also known as “fronts” or “golds”). Because grills are associated with hip-hop artists — particularly those promoting themselves as “ghetto,” most notably the Dirty South rappers of the mid-2000s — they are also associated with a “thug” (read: black-gangster) lifestyle. (This even if an aging Madonna, ever-eager to associate herself youthful rebellion, has been known to wear them.)

In the second image, we see Aayan’s entire person. This photograph was evidently taken by a friend, at a military base; in it Aayan wears full US Navy camouflage gear. Whereas an army man would have predominantly brown or green splotches on his camouflage gear, the US Navy outfit, we see, has splashes of blue and purple; the cap on Aayan’s head, set very straight, shielding his head and face from the hot sunlight streaming in from his left, is splotched in the same camouflage colors. The young man is smiling — and this time we see that his teeth are remarkably even, brilliant-white; these are stereotypically American teeth, with origins in good neo-natal care and the subsequent advantages of fluoride, calcium-fortified milk, and orthodontics. He is holding, at a diagonal, an imposing military-issue rifle, and what looks to be a large handgun in his other hand. This diptych, at the time of writing, has been retweeted 6,022 times, and favorited 4,056.

In a way, one could say that both halves of these diptychs portray the ordinary inanity in the daily life of the adolescent American male: posing and preening, playacting at being powerful. They are bricoleurs of the symbols that reflect cultural capital and “cool.” These are images of young men (and many young women, too) enjoying the ability to experiment, engaging in the freedom to fashion selves according to the demands of the moment, location, and peer-group. Each boy is trying on personas like costume changes. This freedom is something many adults envy, because by now we’re stuck in the “costume” by which we want to portray ourselves, yet we find that it’s often ill-fitting, even as it provides security and respectability. Yet, the young men who construct these collages of their variable selves also show that they’re controlled by the demands of family, society, and the state; they serve in the military, clean up for a school event because mom asked them to, dutifully hang out with the family. Jeremy Connally, in a moment of neither playacting at being cool nor being controlled by the voice of authority, nuzzles his bunny rabbit (whose heart wouldn’t melt at that?).

What sets this hashtag apart is that the images in #IfTheyGunnedMeDown are produced by the very young men who are the targets of stereotypes that paint them as only capable of being one thing: one half of the diptych, unable to play with the possibilities of being or grow and change as they learn about themselves and the world around them. That sort of self-fashioning and self-parodying is usually only acceptable to those who have power in a given culture. Those with little power tend to be regarded as shifty and untrustworthy when they do play with persona — and evidence of such “shiftiness” is used to illustrate the danger they pose. As the perpetual other in American culture, young, black men must always be aware: when they experiment with self-image, responding either playfully or semi-seriously to cultural symbols, those ubiquitous selfies may, one day, should they be gunned down by a white authority figure, be used to illustrate that this young man was precisely as threatening as the white man thought.

That’s why this hashtag resonated so widely and deeply. By using it, the contrasting images and the 140 characters, those in our culture who are usually controlled, shaped, and silenced by a barrage of images projecting their “hostile” nature have been able to break open a closed dialogue. Those young, black men have been able to make mainstream media question their standard practices, and compel the general public to think about the presumptions under which they blindly operate.

Correction: This post originally stated that the cap Aayan is wearing shows the Chicago Bulls logo, but it is the Houston Texans logo. It has been fixed.

Blade Runner Ambient Deckard’s Apartment Sound for 12 Hours (audio). Fantastic.

Relax into the couch as you chill out in Deckard’s apartment helping him track down replicants. Share some hard space liqour out of his bottle bag. This is 12 hours of the ambient droning sound heard in Blade Runner while in Deckard’s domicile. Perfect for imagining that you are in a dystopian future where huma- like androids do man’s bidding until they get too old and too _smart_.

It’s one thing to take a #museumselfie with a work of art, as if to say, “yes, I was here with this artwork” or “yes, here is my reflection in the surface of this piece.” It’s another thing to make Greco-Roman statues look like they were chiseled specifically for selfie-shooting moments.

That’s what Reddit user Jazsus_ur_lookin_well has done, finding a way to make it look like four ancient statues found at the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, Ireland, are taking their own selfies (kind of like these cats). One of the sculptures is “The Fighting Gladiator” (c. 1816), a plaster cast made from a Roman copy of a figure poised for action; the Redditor decided to rename it with the suggestive title, “I want you to chisel over me [NSFW].”

Cruise through the images, admiring the passionate, often times anguished looks on the faces of these sculptures. The selfie shots humanize the artworks, reminding us that they were based on real people; they also make it easy to ignore the histories behind the sculptures in favor of this novel, gotcha moment. Then again, the selfie is now as much a part of the art as the actual history.

Thankfully, the prankster in Ireland was careful not break anything when he took his selfies, unlike some other people …

via Reddit

The University of Chicago whitewashed a mural created by visiting artists to the school without consulting the artists or the organizer of their visit. The school says the mural was painted over in response to complaints from local residents in the neighborhood where it was painted, but the artists involved are calling it censorship.

This past spring, artist and University of Chicago lecturer Katherine Desjardins brought members of the Montreal artist collaborative En Masse to do a residency at the school. After working with Desjardins’s large-scale drawing class on a collage project for a week, the En Masse artists spent Friday, May 16, working with local street artists and a youth group on the mural in question. The wall was part of an abandoned muffler shop on the South Side of the city, in the neighborhood of Washington Park, according to Chicago magazine, which first broke the story. Although En Masse was in town through the university’s visiting artist program, the wall was secured with the help of the new Washington Park Arts Incubator, an outpost of artist Theaster Gates’s Arts and Public Life Initiative at the school.

“Part of the premise of the project, as I proposed it, was the creation of the mural as part of a process of having a dialogue not only between Chicago street artists, many of whom don’t work together, but between artists and community,” Desjardins told Hyperallergic. “Part of the scenario was that these guys were going to be there for an entire day, and there would be opportunity for the community to have a dialogue with the artists as the mural went up. It was all about interaction.”

That is how the day panned out, according to Jason Botkin, co-founder of En Masse. “We received a massive amount of positive encouragement from people throughout the community as we worked on it,” he told Hyperallergic. For that reason, it came as a shock when, on June 20, a staff member at the Incubator named Miguel Aguilar — who also works as a graffiti artist under the name Kane One — posted a photo on Instagram of the mural partially whitewashed. The caption read, “Grand opening, grand closing.” (The post has since been removed and the account set to private.)

In the interim, although Botkin was unaware of any of it, a lot had transpired. “Not long after the mural was put up, an 18-year-old was murdered in the immediate vicinity,” says Ken Stewart, associate director of arts initiatives and strategic planning at Arts and Public Life. Local residents began complaining about the mural, particularly an image it contained of a young boy holding a gun and a stuffed animal — though it’s unclear if these complaints began before or after the murder.

Some brought their concerns to the office of Alderman Pat Dowell, who contacted and began conversations with the university, including staff from the the incubator and Arts and Public Life. Dowell later issued a joint statement with Theaster Gates, claiming, “Several complaints were made that the mural was offensive containing ‘negative images and gang symbols.’” Botkin says the mural did not contain gang symbols and explains that “that wall was a tribute to a friend and local street artist that passed away recently named Brooks.”

No one involved in the discussions surrounding the mural reached out to him, though, nor to any of the other artists who worked on the wall (14 total). Desjardins did receive a “panicked phone call” from someone at the incubator, who told her, “‘The alderperson is about to paint over the mural, and we’ve had so much public outcry.’ I was flabbergasted,” she said. About 10 minutes later, she got a call back saying they would hold off on painting over the mural and hold a community meeting instead. “I said, ‘This is exactly what we want. We want some kind of educational moment here. I want them to meet the artists, to know that they’re not just gang members, destructive.”

But the community meeting never took place. Desjardins heard nothing further until Aguilar’s June 20 Instagram post, at which point the mural was already in the process of being buffed.

“We don’t have an issue with the fact that the community didn’t like the work — that’s perfectly OK,” says Botkin. “What happened, though, the way that the wall was taken down before the artists were approached, basically became an issue of censorship. The tragedy of this is you waste an extremely valuable opportunity to sit down with the community and to at least articulate our intentions. As a group of practicing street artists, these people have really strong relationships with their communities and feel responsibility. The issue was: why were people who were entrusted with dealing with this wall and situation, why did they not contact us before taking it down?”

“I cannot speak much to the internal conversations that took place,” said Stewart, when Hyperallergic asked him that question. “I can say that there was an extreme sensitivity to the question of whether to take it down, and the decision to follow through with it was taken very seriously. From the beginning, it was understood that the mural would be temporary, and the Arts and Public Life Initiative was but one voice in the conversations leading up to its covering.”

For her part, Desjardins says she understands the tough position faced by the incubator and Arts and Public Life, but echoes Botkin’s sentiment regarding a lost opportunity for discussion between the community and artists. “It’s crazily ironic because the whole premise of the project was that moment of dialogue,” she said. “Everyone was on board that we’re creating this temporary piece of artwork to instigate dialogue.”

“The other thing that makes this complicated is that it’s not just the Arts Incubator,” Desjardins continued. “It has to do with local politicians and local community groups and their involvement with politicians. What I would like to see come out of this is not only a discussion about the really incredible and fantastic culture of street art in Chicago, but a new kind of debate over the definition of what is public art, what is street art? Because it’s about young people. The members of the community, they’re of a whole different time period, they have a whole different aesthetic and sensibility about what is beneficial public art, and they’re not communicating with younger members of their community, who are extraordinarily talented people who hide. What can come out of giving a voice to this important creative young energy in so-called underserved areas of the city?”

The Incubator has since announced a plan to turn the wall into a spot for rotating murals, with community discussion in advance. “I applaud all of that — this is great,” said Botkin, who, despite sending a letter to the school endorsed by all the artists who worked on the project, has not received anything approaching an apology. “But we do not see here any responsibility being taken towards why nobody was contacted.”

Fortunately, he added, “the great thing about art and what we do is: we’ll just go out and paint another wall.”

Originally posted 2014-08-11 20:58:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

rebecca blue facefuck source: droolingfemme.

1. You who know Robin Williams only from Mrs. Doubtfire and Aladdin onward will never understand how liberating and cathartic his early, unhinged stand-up comedy was, how political and anarchic he could be (and still was, even in his recent stand-up), like Jonathan Winters and Richard Pryor had a baby that dropped acid. One of the Rude Pundit's favorite memories from his teenage years is sitting at home and watching An Evening with Robin Williams on HBO with his buddy-to-this-day, Tony.  He annoyed Tony for weeks after quoting lines from it. Hell, everyone was quoting lines from it or from his movies or "Nano-nano"-ing everyone with spread-fingers. Williams was that ubiquitous, that universal, that beloved, in a way that few, if any, performers are now.

2. The Rude Pundit just watched The Fisher King, his favorite Williams film performance, his most successful merging of chaotic humor and pathos into something genuinely Chaplinesque. It's terrific, weird, and emotional.  Other great roles no one will talk about: The Best of Times, as a repressed husband and son-in-law in a working class town; Seize the Day, an adaptation of Saul Bellow's novella, probably his best, least-known dramatic work; and, post-2000, in his faded superstar/indy era, One Hour Photo and World's Greatest Dad, both films where he was consciously wrecking his cuddly, kid-friendly image.

2a. The Rude Pundit never got to see him do stand-up live, but he did see Williams on stage in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo on Broadway, giving a fully-embodied performance as the title character, first alive, then dead, wandering around a post-"liberation" Iraq, commenting on the ludicrous world he saw around him.  He was quite, quite moving and, as ever, quite, quite funny.

3. Everyone suffers depression differently. Williams had wrestled with it as privately as possible, although he did not hide his alcohol and drug abuse, all of which made it into his comedy. But as someone who has, fortunately, through the power of scrips, conquered a somewhat milder case of depression, the Rude Pundit has learned that something he felt was felt by others who have or are going through it: You sense that a darkness has opened and the floor is tilting you toward that darkness, and you can feel yourself physically sliding into it. You want to stop. You want to climb out. But you can't. It's an awful, helpless feeling. You have to fall in and stay until the floor tilts you back into the light.

The Rude Pundit believes he leveled the floor. He doesn't know what would have happened if he hadn't been able to.

4. This one hurts.

You are not obligated to comment on everything that happens.  You’re not a bad person if you do not.

Conversely, commenting on something just because you feel guilty if you don’t say something, or because you worry everybody will think you’re a bad person, doesn’t make you a good person.

Do things you want to, believe in, and have thought through.  There’s no shame in staying out of a topic you aren’t ready to wade into, even if you might not ever be ready to.  There’s no shame in not promoting a viewpoint or voice you’re not fully comfortable with, no matter how many other people are doing so, no matter how important these other people seem to be.

Do what YOU believe is right, what you can handle, and don’t feel rushed into it.  Be caring, be open minded, be willing to look for and absorb new information, but ultimately, you have to be the judge of what you believe in, and what you say, or what views you promote.

If you’re not sure, you can always wait until you are.  You can do more harm than good by reblogging or posting something you’re not sure about.

Being a good person doesn’t mean having to do something all the time.

Sometimes the best move is to not make one.

Trust in you.

After artist Donald Judd moved to Marfa, Texas in 1971, he quickly transformed the cow-town into the art world’s desert outpost, much to the chagrin of some locals. Now, the gentrifying city’s rising property values and mushrooming taxes are threatening to push out long-time residents altogether, according to an eye-opening article by John MacCormack published last month in the San Antonio Express-News. 

Unhappy residents are protesting after a reappraisal of Presidio County properties found their values have doubled in the past year to $1.14 billion, from $563 million in 2013. “A couple of the rich types moved in and paid an arm and a leg for a lot, and then resold it for more, so now the people who live out here find themselves saddled with these escalating valuations,” retired county employee Marge Hughes told the newspaper.

Move to Marfa today and you can purchase a five-bedroom home that Judd once owned for $735,000; though cheaper than a New York brownstone, it’s astronomical by West Texas standards. Several homes in Marfa are priced above $350,000, and many more are in the $200,000 range, according to the newspaper. That’s significantly higher than the $22,000 that Hughes paid for her house 14 years ago; it’s now worth $120,290.

“It’s hard to find anything livable in Marfa for under $100,000, and what you get for that is a small one-bedroom. We still have a lot of out-of-state people looking. Locals not so much,” 71-year-old resident Valda Livingston said. “The young people who grew up in Marfa for the most part can’t stay. It’s the job market. All three of my children are in San Antonio. They couldn’t make a living in Marfa.”

From the Soho and Williamsburg neighborhoods in New York to Santa Fe in New Mexico, artists have frequently upset existing social fabrics in their quest for cheap rent. Though Marfa’s art renaissance has drawn much outside investment, transforming it from “just a dying, little West Texas cow town” — as a retired U.S. Border Patrol agent told the newspaper — to one of the state’s hottest destinations, it has sidelined many with deeper Marfa roots. After watching their town reinvent itself, they may now also have to reinvent their own lives. That hurts artists, too. Instead of living in a diverse, challenging community that might inspire them in new ways, they settle into an echo chamber.

“We’re lucky the world discovered Marfa, but the week your property values get sextupled is not the best time to get people to admit it,” cartoonist Gary Oliver said. “This is a rich town because a small percentage of the people have a lot of assets. But if your taxes go up enough so you can’t pay them, what are you going to do?”

“We’re all sick and tired of these little fluff pieces about Marfa,” 72-year-old painter Emily Hocker said. “This is a wonderful place, but just like other wonderful places suffering from gentrification, the poor people always get shoved aside. A lot of people who grew up here are suddenly on the fringe.”

Molly Moore wrote a post about photographing and being photographed nude. On twitter, she joked that she was proud to say she’d taken my cherry. Because it was the first time I’d ever photographed a willing, nude model. I’ve shot performance art that contained nudity, but that’s different; they are already offering up what they are doing as ‘spectacle’ to a determinate audience. It isn’t intimate. It’s a public act that I have documented. This was very different.

I wanted to write this post to mark the experience and to explain what I learned from it. I had assumptions, and plans, and when I was met with the reality of it – like most intense experiences – it was entirely different from what I anticipated it would be.

I always assumed shooting someone who I knew, nude, would be an erotic experience. And it was, but not at all in the way I thought it would be. It wasn’t sexual, but it was intensely sensual.

The first thing that became stunningly clear is that clothes break up the body. They interrupt the lines of the body, bleed it into the background. A naked body becomes a very solid, very present form. Sounds silly, but believe me, it’s a shock. Your subject is suddenly very, very present. An single-shaded organic shape. And so colour, shape, light, shadow, texture and line really become the first things your eye starts to work with in the composition.

So at first, I was concentrating on just that contrast – white skin against a dark tree bough. Then the flesh, smooth against the rough, patterned surface of the tree bark. Then lines and shapes: the organic lines of legs, arms, torso, profile juxtaposed against the geometrically cut gravestones, the railings, the bare earth beneath her. Where those shapes were echoed, and where they crossed, and fought against each other for balance. The dapple of light on her body, how it was coming down in shafts between the leaves, where it was illuminating her. The weight of her light body against the dark background, in balance, unbalanced. Her leg hanging, arm dangling, breast canted. Gravity there in the photograph, acting on a body. Motion delayed.

I could have played with just those things for hours. It is very compelling to deconstruct the body in this way. It feels transgressive to do it – to reduce someone you know and like to part of a composition. Molly as part of the landscape; Molly in opposition to the stone; Molly smooth against the roughness of the bark. It’s entertaining, and impressionistic. And yet, I felt strangely guilty about it. I’m sure it wouldn’t bothered have Molly. But it bothered me that I could so easily reduce her to the elements and principles of art. Something I have taught, year in and year out, for what seems like ages.

So, I decided to focus more on the context. The graveyard. A real woman’s body – that’s been lived in, and borne children. I thought about Gothic Victorian novels and how liminal the female body was for them, how fragile and fleeting, how forever-imperiled by disease, and poverty, and childbirth and violence.

This graveyard was full of dead women and their epitaphs. Tender and formal, steadfastly denying the nature of decay, and the truth of bones, the moist dead meat left behind when the soul has fled. The sublimation of the natural world for some quaint, narrative ideal.

Finally, I remembered a lecture by Judith Butler, strangely enough, about the photographs of Abu Ghraib. The act of the lens as aggressor, as an enabler, the shutter as trigger that sets the wheels of atrocity in motion, the ease and casualness digital image-making as normalizer of obscenity. And I thought about the camera as death. Not the angel of death, not the murderer in the woods, but death waiting, watching, observing a body in the slow process of dying. Not now, not tomorrow, but inevitably and the awful patience of that eye.

That was my experience of photographing Molly Moore. I really can’t say when I have learned more in two hours.

Or, let’s talk about different styles of bottoming and submitting. This post will probably make more sense if you read the last one about styles of topping and dominating. These two posts were inspired by Xiao Yingtai’s brilliant post “Am I Just Selfish? Service Versus Control,” which you should go and read.

The gist of her post is that in addition to the service submissives who everyone seems to know about, there are also control-oriented submissives who (shockingly enough) just want to feel controlled during a scene.

Xiao Yingtai’s post blew my mind because she explained something I’ve literally spent years trying to understand: what the hell people are on about when they say they want to be “trained.” I always thought people who wanted that had spent too much time with one-handed BDSM reading and not nearly enough time talking to real people about how they actually live their lives. But it turns out that some s-types are control-oriented and love things that would make service-oriented submissives miserable. Or to quote from the post:

Constant micromanagement and correction? No endpoint? Sign me up for this!

I never realized that feeling controlled was the point when someone asked to be “trained.” I always kind of thought they were just bad at service or had the idea that there was some magical “right way” to do things and if they learned it they would be the perfect submissive and never feel sad or lonely or inadequate ever again.

The idea of “training” also irritated the shit out of me because if you assume it actually is about making yourself useful, then being trained by someone else before you look for a partner is a complete waste of everyone’s time. Even something as simple as how to make tea isn’t that likely to carry over, and assuming that all dominant women take their tea the same way (or even that we all drink tea) is a good way to convince your prospective dom that you see her as female dominant seven of nine, not an individual human being.

Where things get complicated is when people try to sell themselves as service submissives when making themselves useful is really, really not the point of the kind of scene that they’re after.

To quote Mistress Matisse’s article “Slave Labour“:

Some folks try to turn what’s sexy for them into something of practical use to others, in an attempt to attract partners. This rarely works. My friend Jae has coined a not-very-complimentary generic term for the breed of man who does this: “the Panty-Washer type.” The name springs from dirty-underwear fetishists who try to persuade you that hand-laundering your lingerie should earn them sexual favors.

Another example of that type are the boys who’ll offer to, say, scrub your floor. Oh–did they mention they’d be doing it naked? And you will be standing over them, supervising and disciplining them the entire time? In full fetish gear? With a riding crop?

Guys, there is someone out there who wants to have that scene (possibly for $250 an hour, but that’s a separate post), but you are absolutely not going to find her by trying to convince people that this is a good way to get their floors clean. For fuck’s sake be honest about what you want. I mean, I’m not even particularly control oriented but the way Xiao Yingtai puts it is just hot:

But some of us irrational types like being constantly pushed further. We actually live for that state of desperation, we get a kick out of providing entertainment through our suffering. Or, at the very least, the boot on our necks.

Entertaining me by suffering for me? Yes please! Desperation? I’m all over that. Tell me about that if you want to play, not about how clean my house is (not, let’s be honest) going to be.

It turns out “training” actually does mean something after all. It’s still not my thing, but it makes me so happy to finally have any idea what people who like it are talking about.

Readers, are any of you into “training”? Has anybody else struggled to understand what that hell “training” even means?

rememberyourbones:

This is me:

I’m the girl who got headbutted. You might recall this incident from a few years back with either a feeling of support and the urge to high-five me, or an intense dislike because I’m mad feminist, hell-bent on making up stories to demonise men. If you are not familiar with the story, I will give you the short version; I saw a man attacking his girlfriend and I stepped in to stop him, resulting in him headbutting me after a lengthly confrontation where he threatened to have me killed. The man was prosecuted. I made a post about it on my personal blog which had about two hundred followers. The post gained a monumental amount of attention, but a couple of months later, someone decided to ‘prove’ that I had made all of it up. I was the centre of an online witch hunt for months. I was threatened, bullied, laughed at and shot down whenever I tried to offer a rebuttal. I wasn’t too bothered, because the man had been sent to prison and I stayed in contact with the young girl who was very grateful that I had stepped in. It didn’t matter to me that a few thousand people thought I had made it up; I knew the truth, the police knew the truth and my friends and family knew the truth. I stopped using my blog and ignored all the mad comments.

But it continued. It snowballed dramatically. Before I go on, I can assure you that this happened. I promise. You can Google my name, Laurie Malyon, and you are one click away from finding numerous articles very clearly stating my attacker’s sentencing.

I’ve put up with comments and threats for almost two years now, and whilst everyone around me tells me to ignore it I can no longer sit back and watch people slander me on the Internet. I realise that I am utterly powerless in changing the opinions of 500, 000 people who are too lazy to spend five seconds doing some research on Google, but I’m going to give it one last go before I stop talking about this godforsaken controversy forever.

I did a good thing. I am proud to say that. I stepped in when many others would not have. It’s very easy to see something like that and pray that someone else stops it so you can remain a bystander, but there was no one else around to stop it when I saw it and I’ll be fucked if I’m ever going to sit by and watch somebody be harmed intentionally at the hands of someone else. I am still in contact with the girl. I see her perhaps once every two months, and she still thanks me every time she sees me. I helped her out of a situation that everyone was too scared to help me out of when I was her age. I stepped the fuck up.

The comments I have received about the situation make me very, very upset. I am a human with real feelings and I can read everything that people write. I’m put to shame on feminism blogs that read the ‘debunking’ post and didn’t think to research it. They say that I’m giving feminism a bad name by lying. They say that I’m an attention whore. They say that I’m an idiot for claiming to have stepped into a domestic situation because that can often make it worse. They ask if I’ve ever even heard of a domestic situation. They tell me I deserve to be in a domestic situation for lying. They say that I’m ugly. They say the amount of makeup I wear in my photos is silly and I look like a slag. Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that absolutely negating the entire point of feminism? As a well educated and practising feminist, it is not the comments from men saying that they’ll ‘give me a real black eye’ that upset me, it’s the comments that are hateful and shaming from my fellow sisters.

A lot of people speculate (because I’m a loony feminist) whether or not I’d have stepped in if it were a woman beating a man. Of course I would have. Violence is violence and I completely agree that anyone attacking anyone should be stopped. Twisting it into this and challenging me on it creates even more diversion from the real issue. Why the hell are people trying to pick so many holes in my story? Was it really that difficult to believe that I was a normal girl, on her way to work, who simply stepped in when I saw someone in need? Why have I been questioned and scrutinised for two years? Surely the anger shouldn’t have been directed at me for posting about it, but towards the man who succeeded in assaulting two young women, entirely unprovoked?

I am not taking it any more. I am not remaining silent whilst people call me names and post about how I deserve to die. I am sick to the back teeth of being branded a ‘whore’ by feminists who aren’t really feminists if they’re using a word associated with slut shaming when nothing about my story even mentions anything sexual. I am fed up with being told by men that they’d rape me then give me a black eye with their dicks and how no one would believe me if I tried to get them arrested because I’m that mad man-hating feminist who lied about being headbutted.

I’m trying to undo all the unfair comments with this post. I’m speaking out to the 3.6 million of you who have read about the situation, whether I was portrayed as a do-gooder or a liar. I am asking you to share this so that I can attempt to clear my name. I understand that the post has spread like wildfire throughout the Internet in it’s entirety and that it’s unlikely I will get any kind of redemption from this, but even if this makes 100 people believe me I’ll feel a little happier about the whole situation.

I’d like to thank the masses of you who believed me and who have offered me your kindness and support from the start, and I’d also like to mention that the chap who ‘debunked’ my original post is on my side. He deleted his blog and apologised to me over a year ago. We went out for a burger to talk it over. We cool.

Remember her?  I wrote 2 separate posts about the internet detective who “debunked” her story and convinced everybody (who didn’t bother checking up HIS claims) that she was a lying liar who lies.  It really really frustrated me that people were so easily deceived by somebody using pretty simplistic rhetorical tricks to disguise his lack of proof, and who used emotional manipulation to make people buy it without question.  Also, that so many people were saying how he’s a “real Sherlock Holmes” just because he framed his debunk as being about attention to detail and deduction, and people wanted to believe that you can apply fictional tropes like “omg nobody would EVER wear their clothes like that, HE must be GUILTY” to real life.

It doesn’t surprise me also that a lot of the people condemning her were feminists because the internet detective hoaxer was very sneaky in the way he played the guilt card.  He framed his ending statement to make it sound like he’s a feminist and on “our” side, and he understands that we really want to believe it’s true (just like he did, of course) but that endorsing fake stories only hurts feminism and we shouldn’t be extremists who believe everything.  Playing on people’s guilt and fear that they’re going too far, and giving them an option (not believing her) as a way to prove that they’re NOT “bad feminists”.  It’s a really effective tactic, and why I keep telling people that if you want to be an activist, or advocate for social justice, you have to make sure you’re not doing things out of guilt, because when you do things out of guilt, you don’t think about what you promote, you just do it to assuage your guilt, and that’s not a good way to operate.

Anyway, the point is, THINK before you reblog things.  Check things yourself.  If you don’t have the time, you DON’T have to reblog it.  You’re not obligated to comment on everything.  This would have prevented what happened with the OP in two ways: 1) people might not have reblogged the original without thinking, and therefore not freaked out that they might be wrong and reblogged the 2nd one out of guilt 2) they might have checked out the claims of the second post and realized they were false.

I think one day I’ll do a breakdown of the “internet detective” post because there are SO many little tricks in it to get people to buy something that isn’t true, and not to question claims of medical knowledge and other such things. 

But yeah, I’m really really glad to see this show up so much on my dash because I was getting really annoyed how much the fake debunk was spreading, even years later, and any attempt to undo the damage, I’m a big fan of.

<@pyna> i read a survey of all the ways they spell khadafi
<@pyna> theres dozens
< pgp> the only thing gadaffi is good for is testing regular expressions
< pgp> M[ou]'?am+[ae]r .*([AEae]l[- ])? [GKQ]h?[aeu]+([dtz][dhz]?)+af[iy]

The Minotaur is going to take photos of the rising “super moon” tonight.  I hope he gets some good shots to share.  Because it has been one of those damned days when I wish I’d never gotten out of bed.

Yes, stupidity is strong in several “this ones” of my immediate acquaintance lately.  My annoyance level is maxed out.  Pity the poor idiot who shows up on my doorstep to sell me ANYthing at all….brushes, vacuums, or religion.  Because, yeah, human sacrifice is SUCH an appealing idea to me at times.

Tagged: burning stupid

Because it will be useful to do this, to refer people to later: Various complaints/comments/questions about the Amazon/Hachette negotiations and my commentary on it, that I’ve seen online, or have been sent to me via e-mail/social media are below, paraphrased, with my responses. Ready? Here we go.

Why do you hate Amazon?

I don’t hate Amazon. I’m in business with Amazon. They publish many of my audiobooks via their Audible subsidiary, and they sell a lot of my electronic and printed books. I’ve also been an Amazon Prime user since the program started and buy tons of stuff from them.

Then you’re a hypocrite for saying terrible things about Amazon!

If by “a hypocrite” you mean “someone publicly noting the company’s increasingly odd public tactics in its negotiations with Hachette,” then yes. Otherwise, no. I’ve been very clear what my position on Amazon is, to wit: It’s a self-interested corporation, doing what self-interested corporations do. This is in itself neither good nor evil. Its particular public actions are open for comment and criticism.

Why do you love Hachette? 

I don’t love Hachette. I’m in business with Hachette through its UK imprint Gollancz; it’s published two of my books in the UK. Gollancz has done well enough for me. I don’t feel anything that could be construed as “loyalty” to Hachette therein, any more than I feel “loyalty” to Amazon for publishing my audiobooks.

But you’re not criticizing Hachette like you’re criticizing Amazon.

Hachette appears (wisely) not to be offering up as many public opportunities for criticism, as regards this particular negotiation with Amazon. If that changes I might comment on their actions, too.

I still think you’re a hypocrite.

That’s fine.

I also think you’re just a tool of big publishing!

As someone who self-published his first two novels online in an era where if people wanted to send you money they had to physically mail it to you, and then later was the president of a writers organization that frequently went toe-to-toe with publishers to defend the rights of writers and to make sure they were fairly compensated for their work, and who has worked with several small and indie publishers over the years, I find your assertion amusing.

Prove me wrong! Say something negative about big publishing!

I’ll say two things: One, its general continued reliance on digital rights management is stupid and insulting to people who buy electronic books; I’m happy Tor and Subterranean Press, who publish the bulk of my North American fiction, don’t use it, and note its lack has done nothing negative regarding my sales. Two, the standard 25% net eBook royalties are too low, everyone knows it, and I suspect in the very near future if large publishers don’t move off of that as a hard line, they’re going to start losing authors — as they should.

I still think you’re a tool of big publishing.

That’s fine.

Why can’t you see that big publishing is doomed?

Probably because I work directly with big publishing on a daily basis and the part of it I work with is full of smart people who are actively figuring out how to make all this stuff work for them. The fact that one my books — The Human Division, which we initially serialized electronically — was formally a research project, from which data was obtained, crunched and studied intensively, suggests to me that the outside-looking-in image of these publishers as cartoon dinosaurs, flailing chaotically, is, in my corner of this world at least, somewhat uninformed.

But [insert Author name here] worked with a big publisher and says they are doomed!

Okay, and? His or her experience may have been different than mine. Bear in mind that authors are not usually perfect reporters — they carry over grudges, loyalties, slights, personal experiences both positive and negative, etc — and that in general, in my experience, and intentionally or otherwise, they tend to universalize their own individual situation.

Are you calling [insert Author name here] a liar?

Only as much as I’m calling myself a liar, since it works that way with me, too. The point to take away here is that maybe you might want to consider the idea that not any one author should be considered the last word on these sorts of things. This is especially true if the author is nursing a grudge, or has an explicit economic interest in a particular publishing model.

But [insert Author name here] sells lots of books!

So do I. Is there a point you have here? (Also, somewhat related, does anyone else see the irony of criticizing certain traditionally published authors — me among them, I will note — as being part of “the 1%” and thus being somewhat clueless to the real world of working authors, while lauding certain self-published authors whose earnings would also put them into the 1%, in terms of author earnings? Seems sketchy logic to me.)

You feel threatened by this new wave of self publishing and that’s why you hate it!

One, it’s not new — please see my notation of having self-published my own novels, the first one 15 years ago now — and two, I don’t particularly feel threatened by it or hate it, no. Why should I?

Because it will doom the way you get published!

You know, at this point I gotta say I’m not exactly concerned that I won’t be able to sell work, regardless of the publishing environment.

New writers are nipping at your heels!

Excellent — I always need new things to read.

Look, here’s the thing: You can construct in your mind a world where there are the tough and scrappy self-published authors on one side of a battle and the posh and pampered traditionally published authors on the other, and pretend to set them against one another, like flabby, middle-aged Pokemon. But I think that’s kind of stupid and I’m not obliged to live in that particular fantasy world. Nor do I believe that the successes of other writers take away from my own. It’s not actually a zero-sum game where only one publishing model (and the authors who use it) will survive and the rest are eaten by weasels, or whatever. The world is large enough to have authors publishing one way, or another, or by some combination of various methods.

And none of that, mind you, has anything to do with Amazon and Hachette negotiating with each other. Trying to conflate the two suggests you’re not actually paying attention.

You’re smug and obnoxious and condescending.

I’m fine with you thinking that.

I will never buy your work!

Oh, well.

This whole conversation is just you using strawmen to make your own points for yourself!

Hush.

I WILL NOT BE SILENCED.

Fine.

Seriously, though, what do you want out of this?

Me? I want Amazon and Hachette to figure out something that allows both of them to be happy with the outcome — or at least happy enough that they can continue to do business with each other — and for Hachette’s authors to have the same access to Amazon as other authors currently have. I would like for both Amazon and Hachette to have economic models that work nicely for authors, so that everyone makes money and everyone is happy. And as I’ve repeatedly said, I would like authors and everyone else to stop thinking this negotiation is about an epic clash of cultures, and see it for what it is: Two companies trying to maneuver for their own economic advantage.

But it is an epic clash of cultures!

Maybe you need to get out more.

I have a complaint not addressed in this entry!

That’s what the comment thread is for.

In March this year I was being served at my local Sainsbury’s and was reluctantly drawn into conversation by the woman behind the counter; she revealed she lived on the same street I used to live on and mentioned a friend of mine who also lived there, a friend I’d lost touch with since moving. A few exchanged words about this friend – name of Alison – followed, and then the woman serving me casually said, ‘Oh, she died, didn’t she’ – in a house-fire, apparently, ‘a couple of years ago’. I thought I hadn’t seen her around for a while because she’d moved. I didn’t expect this.

In a way, I’ve been lucky to reach my mid-40s and only experienced the loss of beloved pets, aged grandparents or relatives I hadn’t seen in years. For anyone whose disconnection from their family has resulted in familial affection and loyalty being transferred to friends, however, the first death of a friend can be devastating. What made hearing of Alison’s death worse was the fact that it hadn’t just happened; a cursory search through the online archives of the local newspaper actually told me it had happened in April 2010 – four whole years ago. I could’ve sworn I’d last seen her a couple of years previously – three at the most; but a root through my diary of 2010 told me my last encounter with Alison had taken place just three days before she died. Like me, Alison lived alone, which meant she died alone, at home and in a fire, on the eve of her 50^th birthday. 

Alison was one of those people who make a lasting impression because they’re unlike anyone else we’ve ever met, a person without a reference point, someone genuinely incomparable. She was the most eccentric individual it’s ever been my pleasure to know and also one of the funniest, often unintentionally so. Nothing about her was remotely conventional, so it makes sense that our first meeting remains one of my life’s more unusual ones. I was walking my dog on a street behind where I lived one evening in November 2002 and saw what I assumed to be an abandoned Guy across the street, a slouched figure in an indolent parody of the lotus position. I looked again and gradually realised it wasn’t a ragdoll effigy destined for the top of a bonfire, but a human being, a woman. I approached her to ask her if she was okay and she answered in a mumbling fashion without lifting her head. Having been recently associated with a community of hard drug-users, I thought I recognised all-too familiar signs, but she insisted she wasn’t on drugs. With the help of a passer-by, I managed to get her to her feet and inquire where she lived; my face received a smack of spirits from her breath and I finally knew the cause of her condition before proceeding to effectively carry her home as though she were a wounded soldier on the battlefield; thankfully, it turned out she lived in the neighbouring apartment block to mine and we were no more than 200 yards from home. 

After this bizarre opening, I used to see her around on the streets but we never spoke; only several months later, when she finally deigned to open a neighbourly conversation with me did she admit she’d been embarrassed to speak to me on account of the state she’d been in the day we met. But I soon realised Alison liked a drink. No binge-drinking pub-crawler, though – more the proper old-school alcoholic indulging alone at home with bottles for company. She had the classic spirit-addict physique, without an ounce of fat on her, almost as if she’d once been a model or ballerina whose dedication to the profession had rendered her incapable of weight-gain; and it was impossible to guess how old she was. She dressed in a manner that wasn’t age-specific and had the aura of loner about her, with no suggestion of husband, partner or family. Her accent was southern ‘posh’, and I quickly learnt she had a fascinating (if occasionally frustrating) habit of going off on a tangent during a conversation, switching subject mid-sentence, as well as opening conversations with the quirkiest of ice-breakers, such as ‘Have you ever tried Coco Pops?’ We initially used to bump into each other on the street and stand and chat either for a minute or half-an-hour, depending which unpredictable mood Alison happened to be in, something I could never second-guess beforehand. It also depended on how much she’d had to drink. Then she started calling round at my flat, usually to borrow tobacco or loose change; she was in the same breadline strata as me, which hardly qualified me as the best person to come to for a loan that wouldn’t be paid back. But even when I wasn’t feeling sociable and had nothing to give her, she always made me laugh. Alison could come out with an almost Peter Cook-esque surreal, spontaneous observation in the same way most people will make small-talk about the weather.

She revealed snippets of her past in dribs and drabs: She’d been amongst a contingent of servicemen’s families evacuated from Cyprus in the early 60s (her father had been in the RAF at the time); she was a cousin of Wilko Johnson; she attended St Martin’s School of Art when Jarvis Cocker was there in the early 90s; she had been in an ‘abusive marriage’ she’d entered into because she was pregnant. The latter surprised me the most; she had a child? There’d been no hint whatsoever of that. But for all Alison’s undoubted entertainment value, there was an undeniable air of indefinable sadness surrounding her that always made me think of Eleanor Rigby; she seemed as lonely as I was. There were moments when we could have been more than friends. I twice asked her out early on and she turned me down; when we became closer, she asked me out more than twice and I fudged the issue; the timing was never right with either of us for that kind of relationship. 

The more we saw of each other, the needier she seemed to become; but I wasn’t in a position to help her, as I was going through a bad patch myself. I’m ashamed to say sometimes I crossed the street to avoid her and when she once came round to ask if she could move-in with me, I refused. When I eventually relocated a mile or so up the road, I didn’t tell her in advance and when I used to bump into her thereafter, I was determined not to give her my new address. And then I suddenly never saw her again. Only when I found out she’d died four years previously did I belatedly realise how fond of her I really was. This overdue realisation motivated me to turn detective, attempting to chart the progress of a life that began in the affluence of West Sussex and ended in a poky rented flat in Leeds as it burned down around her, estranged from family, friends and (as I discovered) two sons. What had led her to this end? I eventually acquired copies of both her birth and death certificates and have applied for copies of the coroner’s report from the inquest into her death as well as the pathologist’s post-mortem. Incidentally, only two people attended this inquest: the pathologist and the fire-officer who put out the flames in her flat. No family; no friends. 

I found out where she was buried and visited her grave – a pitiful little plot, overgrown with weeds and marked by a pathetic little ‘corporation’ cross with a plaque that didn’t even state her date of birth. It was an appalling monument to a special person that had slid into neglect because no one cared. A friend who accompanied me on the journey was disgusted and suggested we do something about it, so we did. We purchased the necessary tools and began to transform Alison’s grave into a more fitting resting place for her, cutting the grass, planting flowers and adding a plaque with a personal tribute. I documented this transformation with photos and experienced the rarely-discussed positive side of social networking as a consequence, inundated with an overwhelming wave of kind comments on the project, something that climaxed with a friend of a friend I barely knew building a spectacular new cross for the grave. There was a determination in me to prove that somebody gave a shit about Alison and that someone who had made a difference deserved better; and it was nice to learn that this appears to have struck a chord with so many people. Perhaps Alison’s unnecessary, tragic death served as a sober reminder to all of us who live alone that there but for the grace of God…and so on. 

But the strangest gesture of appreciation came one day when I opened a cupboard I had already opened before that same day and saw fifty pounds had suddenly appeared out of thin air, three crisp notes that hadn’t been there a couple of hours earlier. Although every logical avenue was explored, none offered an explanation. Besides, I knew where the money had really come from the moment I saw it. I told you she was a special person.

©Petunia Winegum.