Can we stipulate that people die?
philosophy
When blue ink is your therapist
Look, figuring out how to get what you want is the easy part. Figuring out what you want is the hard part.
I thunk up this bit of wisdom for Magdalene (The Great Mormon Novel™) when I was rasslin’ with this concept way back in 2011. A perusal of my hard drive tells me I’ve been cogitating on this since at least 1998.
How to start a war, part 1
I’m going to air my family’s dirty laundry because the whispers, half-truths, and manipulation that have been levied against my family—particularly my mother, who is innocent in all this—with people who’ve known us 25+ years who’ve believed it and never asked for our side of the story, has pushed me past my limit. So far, I’ve only been setting the record straight privately, and even then I’m not quite believed. Protesting too much is gauche even if you’re right, so I had decided to let it go, but my second-oldest cousin’s snubbing of my mother is the last straw.
You want to slap us in the stocks on the town square, Aunt Susie? Fine. But I have a platform you don’t.
No man is an island
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Never apologize
When you say stupid shit and read it back almost 2 decades later when you’re cleaning up your blog
Part 3 of a series
David Bowie’s cod and what women really want
Wherein a women’s studies professor missed the most obvious thing about Jareth the Goblin King—and it isn’t his cod.
The movie Labyrinth (1986) is a tale of an adolescent girl’s quest/hero’s journey/sexual awakening. It’s a fantasy that features muppets good and slightly evil and everything in between. It also features David Bowie in very tight tights with his cod on obvious display. You can’t miss it—and that’s the point.
But why is it the point? Read more
Premeditatio malorum (or, borrowing trouble)
A Musing:
A lot of things really bad and really good have happened around Chez Moriah the last couple of years. One of the good things is that XX tax deduction has learned how to drive and is getting out and about on her own. She works only a few minutes away, so we got used to her driving to work and back. But she has an internship 20 minutes away from home, all freeway, heavily trafficked, and sometimes very windy. Today was her first day driving it by herself, and I am nervous and scared.
The Vomit Book
We have a strategic plan
Musings on the “placeholder” heroine
I.
Except for those little moments relieved by the occasional huge moment, everyday life can be a drudgery. Whatever you are engaged in, be it work (no matter how glamorous or lucrative it is) or raising a family or fulfilling your calling at church or attaining some long-held goal (usually all of them at once), at some point, you’ll find yourself slogging through it and wondering where the magic is. Read more
The Mamba
A friend wrote something on her Book of Faces, and instead of taking up all her comment space, I thought I’d put it here. I felt impressed to say a couple of words, but then it went into many words and then paragraphs. OMG I take a lot of words to say a thing.
On reading – links roundup
One day I saw somebody say, “Links roundups are lame.” Well, I like them, but I have minority opinions more often than not. You know what? Fuck that. I like ’em and this is my blog.
Is ‘devouring’ books a sign of superficiality in a reader? Amongst romance readers, of course, this question is fightin’ words.
Paint the corners
My 10-year-old XY TD can’t wait to see Pitch. He wants to watch it because it’s something that’s never been done before, a woman pitching in MLB.1 He doesn’t see a girl. He sees himself. In her. The underdog2 3 misunderstood, not wanted or liked, basically alone with too few allies, too different to have as smooth a ride through malehood as his peers.
______________________________
1. Or, as Dude pointed out to me last night because we’re both kind of fascinated with XY’s reaction to the series (whereas 13-year-old XX is so not) (she already knows she’s a badass), a 17-year-old girl struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game and a woman hasn’t been in the MLB since.
2. “A girl will never be able to throw hard enough to compete with boys. It’s biology and we can’t change that.” My dad told me a girl would never be able to throw a curve ball because their elbows are constructed differently from a boy’s. I don’t know if that’s true. I’m not interested enough to find out. But I was kind of shocked to hear it from someone else.
3. I introduced him to Rocky last year. He’s now a devoted disciple of underdog movies. He gets it from his mom.
What is it about this game
… that compels people to reflect and grants epiphanies like a fairy godmother?
Thirty years ago, I was at the KC Royals parade after they won the World Series. You know, George Brett. Bret Saberhagen. Those guys.
I didn’t care about baseball much before or after that, not that I was ever anything but a fan-in-name-only because I didn’t understand the game. A childhood watching Little League and trying to figure out radio announcers’ jargon tends to blunt one’s enthusiasm.
And then there was college and life and the strikes and the juicing and the Congressional hearings and who wants to get into baseball when they threw a big temper tantrum for a game that’s all fake anyway? You want more money for your steroid injections? Fuck you.
The value of knowledge
Bas relief
Yesterday I threw out karate belts I earned between the ages of 18 and 20. They were musty. Hidden away, like all the stuff I haven’t found places to display yet. I like space. I value space. Open, empty space and shelves that say, “We don’t need to be filled to feel important.” What they need to be filled with is essentials for survival, but that’s another story.
A friend on Facebook asked me how I could bear to throw them away because I earned them. I see her point; they are a trophy and I did earn them. All these years I have not wanted to throw them out (if I thought about it), but something’s been changing in me for a while now, about carrying baggage and grudges.
Of malcontents, futility, and funny prostitutes
But the truth is that I am just really tired. Perhaps the vacuum in affect attested to by the accumulation of emoticons and emojis has little to do with the flattening effect of digital communication. Maybe feelings are simply exhausted.
The little things that do not show
“All day I did the little things, the little things that do not show; I brought the kindling for the fire, I put the candles in a row, I filled a bowl with marigolds, the shallow bowl you love the best—and made the house a pleasant place where weariness might take its rest.”
—Blanche Bane Kuder
“The Blue Bowl”
Maps were made by people who went first
“ … maps were made by people who went first and didn’t die. The maps that survive are the ones that work.”
God’s Debris, Scott Adams, p 32
The only thing more powerful than fear
“The only thing more powerful than fear is routine.”
Rot & Ruin, Jonathan Maberry, p 190