#59: Well.

Election special bulletin

I wrote the majority of this issue towards the end of October, and, as usual, reading up on all the articles and essays I want to link to is what took me past the turn of the month, and now, past the election. I can’t just let that slide by and wait a month to talk about it, obviously!

So, I’m angry, and upset, but mostly angry. This was a combination of the Dems throwing away a victory by disregarding issues important to people who would have voted for them (Gaza! not cozying up to war criminals! humane border policies! trans rights [which win elections when you run on them, by the way, look at the data]!), and just… a referendum on hate. The country lost that referendum. We did not pass the test. We decided it’s more important to be a racist, to be a sexist, to be a transphobe, to be a xenophobe, than to be a functioning country. It’s more important to make sure the people you hate know you hate them than to take care of each other. I know, I know, this isn’t a surprise and this test has been failed every time it has been issued, but we’re experiencing it this time. Literally everything is about to get worse, yes even for people with privilege, so it’s time to get the fuck to work.

It is now our job to take care of each other (this has always been our job), since we are living under a regime that explicitly will not. It is now our job to make the work of the oppressor more difficult and unpleasant. It is now our job to make sure the people who discarded us - in favor of… what? - know that we see them and we know how little we mean to them. All of these have always been our job, but now they’re more important than ever.

I don’t know what everyone else is working on, but here are a few resources and lists of things you can do to help yourself and others:

• this very useful checklist of how to keep yourself prepared, by the redoubtable rahaeli (whom follow wherever you get your social media)

• Rebuilding the Village, on creating a functioning community where you all have a role and take care of each other

• the DIY HRT directory, in case this is an area of interest for you or anyone in your life

• and finally, a very important volunteering opportunity, ballot curing: this is a way to phone people who mailed a ballot but there’s some small detail wrong with it and help them get it sorted out so that it can be counted. Here are some ways to help with that in Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan.

Actual (aka personal) updates

We’ve got a bad(?) habit around here of rewatching the full runs of old shows; if you ask me if I’ve seen this or that newer show, the odds aren’t good, because I’ll have been spending that time watching Cheers, or He-Man¹, or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The latest has been Daria (I realized that it isn’t the cultural touchstone I think it is, because not everyone was 15 when it came out, hence the link).

I didn’t really watch it in its first run. I’m not even really sure if it aired on any of the Canadian channels, or if I’d have to have had a way of watching MTV to see it. I was aware of it, though; it was in the culture, and I knew I was in many ways “a Daria” - smart, sarcastic, suffering through high school, snobby about the popular kids being “followers” and “trendies.” In a few other ways we were quite dissimilar, too, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

So yes, I was primed to enjoy it even before we got started, and of course I did, even if I did occasionally lapse into Beavis voice and say “heh heh… Di-aria.”² If you haven’t watched it in a while, I’m here to report that this show - this cartoon, about disaffected high schoolers who speak in monotones, and the bimbos, jocks, sleazeballs, and other types that populate their school, this Beavis and Butt-Head spinoff - has absolutely no business being as good as it is.

It could have been one-note. Some of the episodes kind of are, if we’re being totally honest, but that’s not my point. There’s character growth! There’s continuity - for a cartoon to remember that the dad had a minor heart attack half a season ago and call back to it in a throwaway line? For someone getting a boyfriend to trigger a multi-episode arc of soul-searching? But beyond that, Daria isn’t positioned as this perfect outsider, always correct by virtue of her nonconformist attitude. Sure, most of the other kids are idiots of one kind or another (except Jody!! Jody is the most shit-together person at Lawndale High!! And even she has crises over having to be that person! Justice for Jody!), but Daria is too far up her own ass sometimes! She can be a bad friend; she can be selfish; she can feel deeply betrayed by her one friend, Jane Lane³, for Jane doing something she enjoys but that Daria feels like is capitulating to The System (Jane likes to run, and at one point she joined the track team, and Daria felt like she had thrown her lot in with the loathed and detested jocks).

I remember having that very same experience with a friend in high school! I was the Daria in this situation, and there was something we both didn’t do, and then she casually went and did it one day because she felt like it. Here I was thinking we were Taking a Stand and she was throwing that away - but that wasn’t it, really. I was just being a teenage dumbass. And your ass can be dumb even if your brain is smart, which is a lesson that it took me a while to learn.

Also, I just love Tiffany, the dimmest bulb in the low-wattage constellation that is the Fashion Club. She sounds like she’s perpetually stoned, even though that is distinctly against the bylaws of the Fashion Club of COURSE. Whatta show. Go watch.

But I didn’t just want to bring you tv show recommendations from 30 years ago⁴ in this newsletter. This actually ties together with something I read in a book a few days ago and now cannot find in that book no matter how hard I look, but it was a line about it not mattering how you define yourself because what you are perceived as is what you are, for all intents and purposes. I don’t fully agree - I think it does actually matter how you define yourself in terms of your own mental health and how you engage with the world, but it’s definitely true that regardless of who YOU think you are, other people will engage with you based on who THEY think you are. And this is a problem Daria, and people who would consider themselves as being Daria-esque, have to contend with!

To expand, and using Daria as an example, let’s consider the oft-rumored relationship between her and Jane. The show doesn’t lean into that at all, but a) come on, and b) come the fuck on. But what if they indeed are not hooking up, not even having that kind of intense friendship where you don’t realize the nature of the relationship until you come to terms with some things later in your life (they are, but anyway). Let’s say, for the sake of argument, these are two heterosexual people who are not in love with each other. Nothing changes the way they actually feel about and behave towards each other, but if everyone else thinks they are a couple, they will treat them as a couple, and they will get the same discrimination of being perceived as gay as if they actually were gay (which, again…).

And I think of this every time I see people arguing over the correct name for their particular subset of a particular queer community. You can call yourselves whatever sings to your heart, but the people who want to mistreat you will lump you together with the people who have small but significant differences - to our enemies, those differences don’t matter at all, and we’re all equally as despised. These nomenclature wars might not, in the grand scheme of things, be as important as they feel like they are. Or, maybe, realistically, they are important, but they’re important within the group; outside the group it’s more important to stand shoulder to shoulder.

Being what you’re perceived as was also one reason I wanted to move away when I graduated high school. I wanted to start over somewhere that no one had preconceived notions about me. I felt like if I wanted to change and be a different sort of person, it wouldn’t matter while I stayed at home; even if I was visibly changed, everyone would still think of me the same way. So I had to leave. Now, it turns out I didn’t change at all, not really, not deliberately, although I did run into the same perception problem some years later when I had lost a lot of weight from being sick, and my mom made some offhand remark about butter even though I was fully within the era’s extremely stringent size regulations. Because to her, I was still the fat person she had classified me as, and my actual size was irrelevant. (I should note that my mom and I get along great most of the time and she doesn’t make this kind of comment a lot - it stuck out because of its unusualness, and because it was totally unrelated to my actual extant figure).

I’m not saying all this about being what you’re perceived as because I think it’s good, or because I think we ought to capitulate to other people’s preconceived notions about us. I’m saying it because we need to know that it’s true. It can be fought and it can be subverted, but left to its own devices it’s going to be the lens through which other people understand us, the framework for their stories about us. That part infuriates me the most, which is why I talk about myself so much. I want to be the one to set terms for my own story. And in the same way that our memories from early childhood may really just be memories of what the family lore says happened (rather than literally remembering it happening), so with the way other people think about us. “Oh you shouldn’t care so much what other people think about you” absolutely not. It’s necessary to care what other people think about you, since that can be weaponized against you and you need to be prepared.

In other news, I’ve lived in Boston for 20 years. 20 years! I’ve never lived anywhere for 20 years, either in a row or in total⁵.

And in other other news, I’ve come down with another bout of sciatica (previously: when I was pregnant and fetus-Hap decided to perch directly on my sciatic nerve for a month) and you know what? I hate it!

What am I reading

Sometimes I have a book in my to-read pile and I really hope it’s the one I’m reading when it’s writing-the-newsletter time, because I’m desperate to tell other people about it. This is one of those times.

I’m reading Cuckoo, the second novel by Gretchen Felker-Martin (who wrote Manhunt, which I also loved and exhort you to read). This one takes place at a conversion camp for gay teens, out in the desert somewhere, and you would think that was enough to make it a horror novel, but no. There is something worse than just the hideous nightmare people trying to abuse these kids into compliance with heterosexuality and expected gender roles, and it’s preying on the campers as well. Imagine your family loathes you enough to pay to have you violently kidnapped and taken away, in the hopes that you’ll come back different. Imagine you’re in the torments of knowing that, and the torments of a place like this, and realizing that something else is eyeing you hungrily as well. It is a book that grabs you by the back of your neck and holds your face down in it.

It actually started to mess me up even just a few pages in, while we were still scene-setting with the family of one kid. The plot hadn’t even started - the point of view was the mother’s, and she was thinking about something that had happened when her daughter was a baby. I have a problem with any babies in danger; that really shits me up, ever since parenthood, and I was breathing hard and clenching my hands and teeth after just a few little lines. To be clear, this is a compliment to the book. It is not a book you read to feel good, and it is acheiving this goal AMPLY.

Some links

These guys had fun writing this headline, I think. Anyway, because I am less than 100 years old, I have never played conkers, BUT I had a “games of the world” type of book as a kid that went into great detail explaining this game, so I feel oddly familiar with it. Apparently there are contests of it that are high-stakes enough to cheat at! Criminy! King Conker Charged with Cheeky Cheating at Conkers Contest

I feel like we heard a lot more about the destruction wrought by Helene, especially in North Carolina, than we did about Milton, at least after it hit. Is this because Florida is supposed to get hurricanes and so we don’t have to pay them any special attention? That seems unfair; the people, whom this article does well by, are still real human beings who deserve our concern. 13 Days, 2 Hurricanes, and Incalculable Anxiety in Tampa Bay

Speaking of Florida. She’s One of Florida’s Most Lethal Python Hunters… But the Invasive Creatures Still Have a Hold on Her

Continuing to speak about Florida, and also about planes, and also about surgery: “Not Today”: The Twin Miracles of Palm Beach

Did you expect a stunningly beautiful essay about migraines? Well: A Head is a Territory of Light

Did you expect a deep dive on chicken tendies?? Well! How Chicken Tenders Conquered America

This article does kind of beg for an editor, but it’s a fascinating window into an old joke-product catalogue, and what people thought was funny, and what was commonplace and what wasn’t (for instance, there’s a lot of cigarette-related merchandise, because everyone smoked). Fun Delivered: World’s Foremost Experts on Whoopee Cushions and Silly Putty Tell All

I kind of like the idea of going to a death cafe. I’m not nervous of talking about my death. I’m not worried about it coming for me, either, and I feel like everyone else is trying to get me to worry more. But I’d have to be careful not to worry the cafe-goers, I suppose. Death Cafes are Alive!

The funniest part is that the family thought it was hideous the whole time. A Junk Dealer Discovered a “Horrible” Painting in a Cellar 60 Years Ago. It Might Be a $6.6 Million Picasso

Somehow no knowledge of this hilariously Too Much restaurant made its way to me in the late 90s. I knew about Fashion Cafe, I think! I obviously knew about Planet Hollywood and Rainforest Cafe, those crossed the border - but I didn’t know about Dive!. I Think Way Too Often About Steven Spielberg’s Failed Submarine Restaurant

I’m inclined to react with a “wow, this is amazing,” but in context, is it? Is it good that she was only able to achieve this success by keeping herself hidden? The True Story of a Famed Librarian and the Secret She Guarded Closely

Drilling into a volcano’s magma reserve to tap it for geothermal power seems like it might be a bad idea, but what do I know? At any rate, the piece is presented in a really cool visual format, and you learn a lot about how Iceland is just a bunch of sinkholes waiting to happen. A New Volcanic Era

Did the documentary film Jurassic Park teach us nothing?? “Lord of the Rings” Director Piles $10 Million Into Dodo De-Extinction Startup

I know this isn’t going to rock the shit of anyone reading this, but the notion that people need to conform to a certain set of attributes and appearances in order to have validity in their sports endeavours is obviously baloney; people who excel at sports often have marked physical differences from the average person. But suddenly it’s a big deal when the difference in question means a woman might not be a delicate flower, or if she might be (gasp! shock!! outrage!!!) trans. Sports Celebrate Physical Variation - Until It Challenges Social Norms

I feel like if you’re rich and old, you kind of have a responsibility to society to get a little weird with it. Hide some kind of valuables and leave clues (and obviously then give or leave most of your money to improving people’s lives in actual tangible ways, I’m not a dickhead). Treasure Hunt for Golden Owls Ends in France After 31 Years

If you don’t have memories of reading these books as a kid, you’re either a lot older or a lot younger than me, I think. Glad to see she’s getting the recognition she deserves. The Woman Who Revolutionized the Fantasy Genre Is Finally Getting Her Due

Well, this is cool. NASA’s Europa Clipper Spaceship Will Scour Jupiter Moon for the Ingredients for Life

Somehow, I can be annoyed both at these buttons being fake AND at people who press them. The doors are going to close in a few seconds anyway. You’re not in THAT much of a hurry. Take a breath. But also, don’t lie to me, elevator. The “Close Door” Buttons in Elevators Don’t Actually Do Anything

This doesn’t mean the bathroom. It literally means the toilet itself. Another example of how prison’s function is to degrade and dehumanize the people caged therein. Prison Toilets are Surprisingly Violent

And when this headline says “before,” it means about 120 years before. During the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers and agents conspired to burn down New York City. This story also features all three Booth brothers, in an odd twist of fate. Before the Jan. 6 Insurrection, There Was the Nov. 25 Arson Campaign

This essay considers both the movie - come out and playyy-eee-ayyyy - and its cartoonishness, and the original book’s much grimmer tenor. But, in the intervening years, as New York has become less and less like the landscape described in the book, the less serious movie has gotten more and more of a hold on the popular imagination. What’s Behind the Remarkable Staying Power of The Warriors

With a headline like that, you might think you know where this is going. You don’t. We Only Learnt of Our Son’s Secret Online Life After He Died at 25

It kind of sounds like yes!! Although it also sounds like par for the course for Immigrations Canada. Still! When it’s a situation like this, you speed them through! Obviously! You get them into the country and do the rest of the paperwork from there! Did Canada Betray Afghanistan’s Female Soccer Players?

I love this. Well, I don’t love the idea of using sausage - sausage!!! - to mark your place in a book, that person will not see the gates of heaven, but I love a collection of people’s spur-of-the-moment bookmarks. I’ve found things like old boarding passes in books myself and it’s always such a tiny mystery. [note: this article is from the Washington Post, but I saved it before the whole thing with Bezos directing the paper not to endorse a candidate because he didn’t want to jeopardize a business deal in the future, so I get it if you don’t want to give them your clicks. The TLDR is that the Vienna library has basically got a museum of these sorts of bookmark objects] Sausage Slices and Love Notes: The Improvised Bookmarks Librarians Find

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

Yes it is spelled that way! They’re Quebecois and they can spell English words however they want considering how the maudit anglos treated them for 200 years⁶. Anyway, I got put onto this band by a newsletter I came across by chance (reading the comments on a post by someone I don’t know online). It’s Some Party, a Canadian music newsletter focusing on interesting rock, punk, and indie music, and you can get into it here!

The last time I reliably listened to the radio, rather than just tuning in when a friend was doing a show or having their band interviewed, was in college; it was on the McGill station that I heard Lederhosen Lucil, specifically this song. But because I gave up on commercial radio at that point, it always strikes me as odd when an adult listens to the radio. That’s for kids, you know? Pick your own music!

Reader, I laughed.

This month’s top 5: Things that make my back hurt

1. Standing up from sitting

2. Sitting down from standing

3. Twisting, especially to the right

4. Rolling over in bed

5. Paying the price for decades of terrible posture when sitting

Alright, well, let me know if you want to get together to figure, uh, something out. We’ve all got skills and talents and we can all help each other one way or another.

_{1 actually really holds up. i could wax lyrical on the ways in which it does, but if you actually want that whole disquisition just ask}

_{2 i spent altogether too long looking for a video clip of him saying that and all i found was one of Butt-Head, who does not say it the same way}

_{3 listen, if i had watched the show as a teenager, Jane Lane would have been the woman of my dreams, although for a while i would have just thought i wanted to be her friend. or maybe be her. you know the routine.}

_{4 i don’t like it any more than you do but unfortunately these ARE the facts}

_{5 actually i passed the record 5 and a half years ago, since the most total years i’ve lived anywhere, even nonconsecutively, is 14.5, for vancouver. prayer circle that i get to start racking up those numbers again one day.}

_{6 give or take}