So in the wake of the election, there is this zeitgeist happening. Now that (hopefully) politics are returning to usual, how do we mend the divide that’s cleaved the country the past four years? The election wasn’t close, but it wasn’t a landslide either. Trump and the GOP still gained a resounding collection of votes. They gained a few seats in the house and didn’t lose the Senate majority. Nearly half the world looked at the past four years, the pandemic, the white supremacism, the economy, the crimes, the fascism, the impeachment, the children in cages, and said “yes, I’d like more of that“. It should be an easy moral…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2014
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews It’s kinda funny. It eschews notions of romance, and really, it’s more about the friend, who reminds me of Tony Goldmark. I couldn’t get that image out of my head — the deadpan, Internet snarker-troll, self-deprecating, black comedy hamball. And that’s what the book is really about. This guy is an amateur filmmaker and it talks about his love of weird, foreign, independent cinema and his friendship with Earl, a black urban youth. And in the background is Rachel, an acquaintance who is forced by Tony’s mother to hang out with because she’s dying of cancer. The story’s not about…
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I Am a Dick
The fact is, I was going to write a counter-argument parable to Jim C. Hines. You see, I was angry. I was sincerely trying to understand this concept, but I kept getting shut down and told “you don’t get it, so I’m not going to explain it to you”. It was going to be fairly well-thought out too. It was about a pig who went into a book store, where she was going to complain to the store owner (a Wolf) how they shouldn’t stock the new book from Tim W. Grimes because it contains references to magic. And her son couldn’t do magic — some kids were making fun…
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Little Red Riding Hines and the Big Bad Wolf
I don’t know why I keep getting in kerfuffles with Jim C. Hines. I think that if we ever met in person, we’d get along great. It’s just we have some convictions we disagree on, or I’m woefully ignorant of. It’s not like I’m coming away obstinate and unchanged. I now understand that inability to give consent for sex = consent not given. You’d think that’d be a no-brainer, but yes, it did need to stew in my brain a little while before I understood it completely. White male privilege is an insidious thing. I resolved it by using the metaphor of stage-diving. You want to jump off the stage…
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Bullies
On Good Kids and Total Fucking Assholes by Kate Harding (starts halfway down the entry) Bitterness, bullying, and breaking the circle by Seanan McGuire Asperger son at school, part 1: What it takes to address bullying by Michelle Sagara Be Someone’s Hero by Diana Pharoah Francis Bullying by Jim C. Hines First, please read the above. They’re all short blog articles about the existence of bullying, personal experiences, and the upsurge in the anti-bullying movement. I’m liking this movement, because A) the previous tactics, as everyone says, don’t work. The victim ends up hurting no matter what. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”…
