#47: On talking vs doing

Actual updates

Everything has continued to get worse.

It’s been put up or shut up time in terms of values lately, which isn’t in itself a bad thing - living according to your values is good - but the circumstances forcing it have ranged from unpleasant to horrifying.

Let’s start with horrifying, and by that, I mean of course the situation in Gaza.

I don’t think I’m going to break any new ground with readers here - you already know where I stand, and if you’re going to tell me that believing in a free Palestine means I support murders and kidnappings, I am here to remind you that no group of human beings is required as a condition of existence to commit violence; no people are synonymous with murder, and the fact that some members of a group committed horrible acts does not mean that any support for other members of that group is equal to support for those horrible acts. Likewise, my outrage and disgust with the decisions (and statements!) of the Israeli government and military does not somehow equate to anti-Semitism - they don’t speak for all Israelis, let alone all Jewish people worldwide - so in case anyone was about to apply some broad-brush thinking to me, please give me the slightest bit of credit as a human being.

But my problem is this: talking about it online doesn’t do much. Like I mentioned to one of you, how many good opinions does it take to stop one bomb? I hate making phone calls, but in the scheme of things, what’s some anxiety and discomfort versus actual death and injury? So I call my elected officials1, telling them that one more constituent of theirs supports a ceasefire, and I try to find other ways I can help. Donating to aid organizations is not super helpful currently, since aid isn’t getting through the border, but there are often other ways to be of use. For instance, when the internet and communications are cut off, which they are not at the moment of this writing but have been three times so far, you can use services like Simly to buy eSIM cards for people there. I try not to buy products that funnel money to fund more arms sales2. And, of course, if you’re able to go out to marches, go. The numbers have been historic. I wish I could have been at one already, but there’s been at least one sick person in my house for weeks3 and that means I’m either taking care of a sick kid or solo-parenting at all times.

So yes, there are things an individual can do, even if it’s small (being one voice in a chorus of many phone calls, or one person in a street full of people) or symbolic (not buying from specific brands - they’re not going to feel the pinch because I bought a different brand, but at least I don’t have to feel like I put a few more dollars in their pocket). I just read an exhortation to “ruin someone powerful’s afternoon,” and: yes. Exactly4.

Recently, also, on a much smaller scale, I declined to go on a work trip (a fun, team-building type of trip, not a conference or anything! I just stayed home and worked like normal!) for a couple of reasons, one of which was that it was in Texas, a state with whose government and policies I’m in a fairly big disagreement right now. And I know that my personal presence or absence in the state wouldn’t change policy there, and I know that plenty of Texans don’t agree with their government, either, but a whole-company trip to a place necessarily pumps a pile of money into that economy - and governments like to point to a flourishing economy as a sign that they were a success. So any little bit I can do to disabuse them of that notion is my responsibility to do. And in addition to trying to give the state of Texas a piece of my mind, I wanted to give my work one as well, for making this particular choice, right in the faces of all the employees who are members of the different groups that the state of Texas institutionally has it out for.

I know some people read this who went, and I know some of those same folks feel the way I did but didn’t want to pass up a free trip, and I mean - you’re probably right, it wouldn’t have made a difference if you hadn’t gone. But for me, it wasn’t something I could just shrug at and go on with.

And this is what I mean by it being “put up or shut up time.” If I purport to hold certain values but all I do about them is post infographics or make a few donations and then go on with my life, how much can I claim to actually care? If I can’t bring myself to actually inconvenience myself or pass up something enjoyable or, you know, put anything on the line in any real way, then how much can I truly say I hold this belief? As one person, and especially as a person who isn’t in the field of politics or weapons sales or what have you, I can do a bit of mutual aid (those eSIMs, for instance), or swell the numbers of a march by one, but really it’s ultimately going to be symbolic and an exercise in being able to live with myself.

Real fun stuff on the ol’ newsletter this month, hey? What else happened, other than war and devastation and regular, homegrown, small-scale evil? Well, we sucked it up and put down an exorbitant (but apparently market-rate, going by the estimates we got) amount for someone to redo the siding on our house. Home repairs: they’re great if you hate having any money! The work hasn’t started yet, but the process of selecting this particular company to do it involved a lengthy sales pitch, conducted around our dining-room table, and afterwards I just wanted to crawl into a cave5 and take a long winter’s nap. I do look forward to having good quality siding that isn’t shedding off the back wall of our house every time there’s a storm, and a front porch free of cracked or loose boards while we’re at it, and I hear that the new siding will improve the state of the house’s insulation, which it desperately needs (at least upstairs). It’s going to be worth it, but unfortunately the “it” in this sentence is a number that is comprised of so many digits.

What am I reading

I’m finally about to finish Carrie, which I started reading in the Kerrisdale branch library as a teenager (it wasn’t even my branch! I was there with friends!).

I haven’t seen any of the film adaptations, and until now I hadn’t read the book, but, of course, since I’m a person who is alive in the culture, I was aware of the general outline. What this means is that the book was still able to take me by surprise. Yes, of course, I knew that I was getting into the story of a teenage girl, bullied mercilessly by her peers because she couldn’t fit in, with a vicious, fundamentalist Christian mother, and that Carrie eventually snapped out at the prom - with supernatural powers - and it turned into a bloodbath. Right? Right.

And that’s not wrong, per se, but I found that by the time it got to the final cataclysm, it had just become a body count; the actual horrors were earlier in the book, when things were happening at a subtler level (or a very unsubtle level but on a small scale).

You can tell it’s Stephen King’s first book in a lot of ways. Partly in the sense that you still see plenty of his signature tics and phrasing, but also because it kind of deflates its foreboding as it goes along rather than building it, and it’s something he changes in his subsequent books. It’s odd to think of a lights-out classic like Carrie being not really that scary, and I guess it’s hard to know whether that’s because the element of surprise is gone, but here we are.

Also, I finished it a couple days ago and have been rereading A Walk in the Woods - the last book in the pile that once threatened to topple off my nightstand and kill me in my sleep - ever since6. But I already wrote this so it’s staying up, dammit.

Some links

Want to read an excerpt from Thurston Moore’s biography about living in NYC in the late 70s and early 80s and rubbing shoulders with all these musical luminaries of tjhe punk and no wave scenes (and also getting his gear stolen when he wouldn’t let someone piggyback off his electric bill)? Well now you can! Murder, Muggers, and Rottweilers: Stories from My Best, Worst Apartment

Okay, this isn’t just because I’m driving full speed into my old lady era - it is rare in animals that they have a period of infertility in their older age! Most of them can continue having babies right up to the end. Or is that just because there have been external forces that shortened their lifespans, down to a point where they would still be in their prime fertility years at the end? This article considers it! Chimpanzees Go Through Menopause, Too

This is a short title for a story with a LOT going on. I almost don’t want to break it down, but: a cantankerous elderly loner died, and a cop pretended to have been his brother so that he could inherit his money - with a major assist from the cop’s side piece, who helped him do the scam. One thing I’d probably recommend is to only be running one scam at a time - cheating on your spouse counts as a scam for the purpose of this argument - because when you get found out for one, you’ll get found out for the other. The Inside Job

Want to be mad… about art?7 They Thought It Was a Masterpiece When They Thought a Man Had Painted It

Want to be mad… about the environment? (If you aren’t already) Got Plastic with a No. 2 Recycling Symbol? Beware a Toxic Problem

This is an excellent mystery and investigation into a crime that took place decades ago: in a beach town, a larger-than-life fudge magnate was murdered, and even to this day, no one wants to talk about it. You should definitely give it a read. Who Killed the Fudge King?

I sure hope self-checkout isn’t a failed experiment because how else am I going to buy garbage food without getting judged? Self-Checkout is a Failed Experiment

This was super interesting! Generations are a really new concept - the idea that people born in a certain group of years are similar to each other and dissimilar to people born in other time periods, I mean; the idea of older people complaining about why the youth of today are shiftless and useless is a trope that dates back to antiquity, but it wasn’t because there were generational traits at play. But now things are different and generations are much more marked! I don’t know, I really got a lot out of this. Why Generational Thinking Isn’t Bullshit

Relatedly: How Millenials Grew Up and Got Old

I am not a teenage girl, nor do I have one in my life at present, so I don’t really spend as much time thinking about this as I should, but we’re truly in the middle of a very girls-focused media moment (specifically in music, but not exclusively) while simultaneously seeing girls in the US losing rights and facing a grim world to grow up in. Up until this article, I hadn’t considered that contrast very much. Girlhood Is Trending, But Actual Girlhood Has Never Been More Fraught

My favorite part of this article is the list of things that have been written about at one point or another as “killing the movies,” but in general, I sure don’t go to the movies anymore nearly ever! Part of this is parenthood - is it worth securing childcare to go to the movies, this title could have been for me, and in many cases it isn’t. But in a larger sense, I don’t know - I have plenty of non-parent friends and I feel like I never hear anyone talking about going to a movie outside of a big event like the Barbenheimer moment, or the concert films of big expensive tours that people maybe wanted to go to and couldn’t get tickets. I might be running into a bit of confirmation bias here, so tell me where you stand on it. Is It Still Worth Going to the Movies?

Okay, something a little bit different here: this is literally a scholarly paper, but please stick with me, it’s interesting. This study examines rich people in both the UK and Denmark and basically asks them how they got to the lofty heights they are at. In both cases, they like to ascribe their success to merit (because of course they do, no one’s going to say “I run the company because my dad ran it before me” or “I had way more opportunities than regular people” or even “I don’t know”). But what merit means differs greatly by country, and that is one of the fascinating learnings of this study. The Meaning of Merit: Talent Versus Hard Work Legitimacy

Please do not do this to me. When I’m dead, let me just be dead. I am so tired. The Creepy New Digital Afterlife Industry

Come see my new band: Boner Statue Mystery! Also, I am 500% sure the headline says “hard evidence” on purpose. The actual hard-on of the statue is a key part of the story, it’s not just funny! A Crumbling, Long-Forgotten Statue With an Unusual Erect Phallus Might Be a Michelangelo. Renaissance Scholars Want Hard Evidence

Hoo boy, is this ever a ride. At first it seems like just your typical faux-rich scammer story, but then it takes a DARK TURN. That being said, the proliferation of people pretending to be rich so as to get other rich people to throw money at them is so fascinating to me. Are rich people super gullible? Or is it something grimmer - that rich people are just more likely to hand over money to other people who are likewise rich (or “rich”) and therefore “trustworthy”? I will never stop saying it: people give you so much free stuff when you’ve got enough money to pay for it, and nothing when you don’t. The Grift, The Prince, and the Twist

Speaking of handing money to people who actually need it. Here’s a look into how a basic income program worked for one family. I’m interested in basic income, but I have concerns about employers exploiting it to pay workers less. If they know everyone’s getting x dollars8 every month What $500 Means to Zinida Moore

Sunken treasure! Right there in New York City!9 Is There Sunken Treasure Beneath the Treacherous Currents of Hell Gate?

Well this is bad! US Surgeons Are Killing Themselves at an Alarming Rate. One Decided to Speak Out

Also bad, but definitely more strange. What if you knew a guy from back in your school days and he turned out to be a monster? What if his money and connections insulated him from consequences for years? My Friend Leon

This, on the other hand, is pretty good: in order to combat clothing waste, France is implementing a program where they subsidize repairs. Broken Zipper? France Will Pay to Have it Fixed

Apparently there’s this cookie that a bunch of people who went to this one college remember fondly but no one can get ahold of anymore, and every effort to recreate it has failed to a greater or lesser degree. This article, rather fascinatingly, describes the author’s attempt to get that info out of the original baker of the cookie, whom he knew from back in the cookie’s prime era. A Baker’s Secrets

And finally: Know! Your! Popes! Know Your Popes

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

So, last month, I put the traditional 3 songs in, and then when I was trying to add them to the annual playlist, one of them was already on there! It turns out it was from a digression in a past issue about my “dishwashing songs,” of which it is one, but in that sense it shouldn’t have gotten a second mention - so you get 4 this month to make up for it. And yes I know that these rules only have meaning to me, but it’s not hurting you so let’s just let me be a weirdo in peace, thank you!!

I can’t explain why I’ve listened to the Pixies so much this month. It was not a conscious decision. Anyway, here’s one I used to put on tapes for people a lot.

You ever get recommended a band by someone you don’t like, or get them aggressively promoted into your face as the next big thing, or something like that, and so you don’t give them any of your time - and then you actually give them a listen a couple years later10 and to your infinite annoyance they turn out to be good. This happened to me with the Arcade Fire and a friend’s insufferable music snob of a roommate, and it just happened to me again with Speedy Ortiz, who was made out to be the next big thing out of the Boston music scene whatever year that was, so I was naturally skeptical - I don’t want to be told what to like! the object of the game isn’t getting big and being known! - but unfortunately the pundits were right and they’re really good. Goddammit.

I listened to a playlist this month that included a lot of old labor songs, so of course “Which Side Are You On” was featured (twice) but not this version. But this one is my favorite.

Semi-relatedly, the song “Hallelujah! I’m a Bum” came up a couple times on that playlist, which put me in mind of the Local H album by the same title (which does not contain that song). Here’s one of the songs off of it.

This month’s top 5: things that are not entirely terrible about November

There have to be some, right? Maybe let’s consider this an exercise.

1. If you live in the USA, Thanksgiving can be on this list, and I guess it’s got to be the big one. Its mythology is a big fat colonial nightmare but you don’t have to observe it that way; if sitting down for the big meal with your family would also be a big nightmare, you don’t have to observe it that way either. But the basic idea, of sharing a big meal with the people who are important to you and thinking about what you’re grateful for, is good. And so is stuffing11.

2. I feel like November is prime “piles of crunchy leaves” time, at least at the start of the month?

3. Discount Halloween candy, also at the start of the month, but considering how fast the Christmas stuff gets put out in stores, you kind of have to hustle. Similarly, discount Halloween decorations.

4. This one is not going to land right with just about anyone but I actually kind of like it when it’s grey and rainy and the light coming in through the windows is soft and lambent and it’s just totally quiet in the house, maybe you’ve got a cozy sweater on or slippers or something so you’re not chilly with the damp - I know I make jokes about having rainwater for blood, but if I do, then I can’t disavow rain’s favorite month.

5. It’s the only month of the year that I get to use this:

I hope you’re managing! I hope you’re still laughing at your friends’ jokes, even the really bad ones (especially the really bad ones, selfishly), I hope you’re still making weird art or going outside and getting some really big lungfuls of crisp air or both, I hope you have a small animal to pet or a kid in your life who is full of beans sometimes or both, I hope your life is still a real LIFE of a life even in the middle of this and even though it is November. And if you don’t feel that way I hope you know I still love you (and I’m not alone in that, either) and I will laugh at your jokes even if they’re even worse than mine, which is tough sledding but possible. We’re all crying every day but at least we’re doing it together, right?