Here’s a short collection of articles I saved in Pocket. There’s definitely a theme to the stuff I collect there, and that’s gonna be reflected here. Now, I usually post things on Fridays, but its that time of year again where I get really, really, tired, very easily, and all I can think about is going to sleep. I call it post-seasonal malaise. (I think doctors call it SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder.) Well, anyway, I’m gonna soldier through it (while trying to get more sunlight.)
The Clapback Mailbag
If you have not read any of these, you need to get over to The Root and catch up. Michael Harriott is hilarious even on his worse days, but he shines when discussing issues of race. He is the only writer who can make me laugh about racism every time. The Clapback mailbag is posted every Friday.
I actually agreed with the choices in this article. These are some of my favorite episodes, but I would pick more than five though, as there are 39 episodes, in three seasons, to choose from.
The last thing I posted was about Greta Thunberg, the young girl who has White men in a bit of a tizzy. This is the funniest thing I’ve seen regarding the entire issue, which of course, is not remotely funny.
Can Black Women Be Introverts
It appears that I simply enjoy being contrary, doing and being everything that’s against society’s mainstream rules. I’m a woman in a society that preferences men. I’m fat in a culture that prefers women be thin. I’m Black in a White supremacist culture. I’m an introvert in a society that prizes extroversion. I’m left handed in a society that prizes right handedness. I have hobbies, I’m not supposed to have, I love music I’m not supposed to listen to, I’m a nerd who likes Science Fiction and math, and a geek who likes to draw superheroes.
According to the American society I’m not supposed to be doing any of that stuff.
Well, that’s too bad, because I mean to go on, as I began.
Butler talked about the overwhelming Whiteness of the Science Fiction genre waaay back in 1980.
Once again, I did things in the most contrary manner possible, as I did not come by my interest in Science fiction and Fantasy through reading the works of Tolkien and Heinlein, like most people did. I found my way into SciFi by way of Stephen King, and the Horror genre, having started that journey with women authors, like Octavia Butler, and James Tiptree. Since I didn’t get into SciFi by reading White men, I tend to think of these men differently than a lot of SciFi fans.
I would love to see some Black time travel stories where the person truly changes the course of long history, like stopping slavery, or helping some tribe win a war. Its funny, but every time I see Black time travel story, its usually them trying to save a life, rather than the usual time travel question of who should be killed, and I wonder if that’s some type of racial thing, because there are a million different ways to change history that do not involve killing someone. And I have never seen stories, at least not the ones written by White people, that ever seek to overturn the truly big events of events of history, beyond the Holocaust. I mean why not stop Christopher Columbus, or disrupt the slave trade?
Here Sherronda Brown talks about how she would love to see time travel stories that destroy the status quo.
We’re supposed to be getting a movie about this soon starring Chadwick Bozeman. Ive been fascinated by Samurai since I was a teenager. I will watch any movie that has samurai in it, and I will definitely see this, if it ever gets made. In the meantime, there’s a couple of books on the topic that I’m looking forward to reading.
There’s already a book on Yasuke’s time in Japan:
An interview with the author of African Samurai Tim Lockley:
And here’s a short fictional film about a young girl who finds out that she is Yasuke’s great, great grandaughter. I would love to see this done on a larger scale.
I’ve noticed that the topic of Introversion is one of my most popular topics on this blog. Well, here are the links to all the posts on Introversion, most especially being Black and an Introvert.
How to train your extrovert, the essential guide for introverts
The modern introvert’s essential guide to navigating people who think out loud, invite you to weekend parties, and interrupt your leisure reading just when it’s getting good.
Several months ago I asked readers who classified on the MBTI scale as Introverts to write me and let me know what some of their experiences were, most especially their experiences in the Black community. A week or so ago I got a response from DJ, who reached out ot let me know what it’s like for him as an Introverted Black man.
Earlier, I spoke about some of my experiences as an introvert who is Black and female. I know a lot about what it was like for me as a woman, about how White people behave when you act like an introvert vs. how Black people behave, and all of that while navigating everyone’s racial expectations and stereotypes.
Most of what he says struck a chord for me, especially the idea of wearing various masks in order to fit into whatever environment you’re navigating.
Hello,
I was curious about the number of black people who were INTJ . It was difficult to find anything on black men and even more so on women .
As an INTJ black man I always assumed I was different ever since I was young . So I developed a “mask” I learned and I watched and kept my true self away from everyone because of certain circumstances . I learned what I needed to fit in , survive , and eventually move on to the next stage in life . I learned how to act and what not to do from the mistakes of others . In a sense it allows me to make plans and move accordingly as you said when we have planned something we feel secure and content . Leaving things open to fate as you know can bring about unwanted results . It even extends to my career choice . Critical thinking is involved in both my fields . INTJs I think can seem impatient because of how fast we think and the fact the general person is fairly annoying . I myself have yet to meet any other black people who fit the same category . I also find it funny cause several of my friends have accused me of world domination.
My story is my much longer , but on of the biggest things I fine about us is out ability to see further than anyone else . Which is why so many of us end up in powerful positions and have large ambitions . And generally we are more aware of our own flaws than anyone else and don’t get me started on relationships . Especially in this current time its almost impossible for an INTJ to find someone to fit their image or doesn’t annoy them .
I also found with the proper guidance , an INTJ can be a will strong force of good in the world but if not it can be a disaster .
I hope to hear back from you ,
Dj Denton
And my response (unedited):
Thanks for contacting me.
Tbh, you’re the only person to write to me on the subject. I’m not an expert on this. I just have some knowledge based on my own experiences, and some reading, because there really is precious little out there about African American INTJs and how they experience the world.
The experiences you talked about have been mine too. I learned how to behave in whatever environments I was in by putting on various masks, and imitating others. For example, when I was in elementary school, I kept being told that I spoke differently from everyone else. Realizing I wasn’t speaking as naturally as others, I learned how to add slang and idioms to my conversations, to make me sound more casual, and blend in better. This was a conscious plan, on my part, which I never mentioned to anyone, as I don’t think anyone would have understood it, but it worked.
I do tend to take what I like to call “the long view”, both into the past and the future, especially when it comes to exterior things like politics. This is another thing that’s hard to explain to people, especially when they’re confused about why you’re not upset or worried about certain world events, as much as they are.
The ability to plan, and maneuver, ahead of an event, and the comfort and self assurance from knowing that your plans are correct, can often look a lot like arrogance, or “being stuck-up” to a lot of people. Has that been your experience? I got called stuck-up a lot when I was young, but really, I was just confident in my planning. (To some people this planning can also make it seem as if you’re just extremely lucky.)
I think this sort of thinking can work out great when you’re a guy, but I think people find this level of calculation, especially in a woman, to be disturbing, as I’ve gotten very hostile reactions (mostly from women) over the years, whereas most guys just think it’s a delightful personality quirk, (probably because I’m not using my superpower for evil).
As far as I know its just something that’s extremely rare, and I’m pretty much settled on being a minority, within a minority, within a minority.
These are two sets of words that describe INTJ women, also known as Alpha women. I say Alpha women because I really don’t see a difference between the personality traits that are attributed to both “types of women.”
Generally happy stuff to start off your week, especially if you haven’t heard some things yet:
Movie News
The first official trailer for Pacific Rim is LIT!!! Hollywood is killing it with the music for these trailers, but I do have to remind them that just because a movie has Black people in it doesn’t mean you need to put rap music in the trailer. Some of us recognize different musical styles, although I realize that the soundtrack can go a long way towards getting a certain type of Black guy into the theater, (namely that no account Pooky from down the street.)
I love that we get to hear Boyega’s natural accent again in an action film. I’m definitely taking my niece to see this because she loved Mako Mori in the first movie, and John Boyega was her first movie boyfriend. This movie also heavily reminds me of The Power Rangers, only for grownups, because its more violent. (I’m pretty sure there’s also lots more of the cussing.)
Boyega stars as Jake Pentacost, the son of the late Stacker, who gets called into Jaeger service, from his underworld criminal lifestyle ,by his adopted sister, Mako.
@@
I’m really looking forward to the reboot of The Predator franchise because it has a long history of racial progressiveness. The first movie featured the first time team up of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers, and I guess the makes realized they had a good thing going, because the second film starred Danny Glover ,as the hero of the movie, and Maria Conchita Alonso, who gets to live to the end of the movie. The third movie, Alien Vs Predator starred Sanaa Lathan, a Black woman as the hero of that movie and it’s one of my favorite Predator films, naturally.
It’s interesting that as many tropes about race have been created in the horror genre, it’s also been a genre that’s been very progressive in its treatment of women, and characters of color, allowing them to be heroes and heroines, allowing them to be the stars, and sometime save the day, or the Earth. But this version of Predator appears to be more mainstream and there’s always tropes in mainstream movies.
Its as if mainstream movies know no other language beyond the visual shorthand of stereotypes (or maybe mainstream writers are just a bunch of lazy fucks who are unwilling to think outside the box). Namely The Black Guy Dies First Trope, and The Smurfette Syndrome.
Mainstream movies simply don’t have track record for subverting tropes that the Horror genre does, and I’ve noticed, the more mainstream a horror movie franchise becomes, the less likely it is to star a PoC, or have the woman be the primary character. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, just a trend I noticed.
I do blame the original Nights of the Living Dead for this. Something of George Romero’s liberal sensibilities in the making of that movie (and casting a Black man as the lead), has made its way into the genre.
Also, I just love Keegan Michael Key and want to see him defeat a Predator.
I thought this was a really interesting article about casting more than one Black person per movie. Now if we can get to the point where we can cast more than one gay person per film, or one woman per action movie, or hey! let’s get all wild and shit and put two, count ’em! TWO, women of color in one mainstream movie, and let them interact with each other.
I know, it’s crazy right?!!!
Chadwick Boseman And Sterling K. Brown Remember When There Could Only Be One Black Actor In A Movie
“The opportunities are not so scarce. And that’s an important moment to note.”
Here is the official trailer for the live action version of Tokyo Ghoul. I’ve heard that Hollywood is planning an all out assault on Manga with live action movies of some very famous books. My stomach dropped as soon as I heard that because nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is asking for Americanized versions of Full Metal Alchemist and Akira. ( I swear to Gob, if Akira does not star Osric Chau, I’m gonna personally send J J Abrams a strongly worded letter suggesting that he go fuck himself!) Now these movies have not been cast yet, but hopefully, they learned their fucking lesson from the handful of whitewashed flops in the past few years.
Yes, it looks almost as terrifying as the anime!
Note to Hollywood:
Please, stop removing Asian people from the stories they created, and cast them as the main protagonists!!!!!
People who are fans of these stories are well used to seeing Asian faces, and some of us have a pretty large pantheon of Asian, and Asian American actors they enjoy watching. We do not read anime, or read Manga, so that we can see White people. If we wanted to see White people in Asian influenced media, we’d just watch your whitewashed dreck!
@@
This is why Osric Chau needs to be in any live action version of Akira. Here he is in a (kind of) fan made trailer of The Akira Project. This is AWESOME!!!!
@@
The Twitter and Tumblr response to this article had me cackling the whole week. I mean, how do you reach a point in your emotional development, where you have had your ass beat by this person 18 times, and you still out here signing checks your ass can’t cash, even when you cheat.
Maria Sharapova’s Rivalry With Serena Williams Is In Her Head
Sharapova’s new memoir suggests that she still can’t seem to accept the reality that her whiteness is not enough to compensate for her own failings.
She’s not good enough at tennis to have a rivalry with Serena. You have to be able to sometimes be able to beat someone for it to be a rivalry as opposed to a regularly scheduled ass whoopin’.
It’s never a rivalry if you’ve only beaten someone two times and they’ve beaten you 18 times in a row and badly Serena has decimated this woman for a decade-plus there is no rivalry it’s only Domination by Serena, Maria knows that but pride mixed with delusion is a motherfucker
Serena don’t give a fuck bout her. She’s literally has beef with her imagination.
@@
*Okay , here’s some commentary on why dystopian apocalypse wardrobes always seem to consist of bondage and fetish gear. Personally I blame Mad Max for starting that trend, but this person has another theory on this very important issue:
why does so much post apocalypse media have people wearing straight up bdsm/fetish gear like. do the kinksters watch the world ending and think “oh boy i can wear my bondage gear in public now”
What I wanna know is why the spiky kink warriors are always the bad evil marauders. They might be into some weird shit and unafraid to show it but that doesn’t mean they want to go around killing dudes. They’re a tight-knit bunch. A lot of them are queer. They understand the importance of community.
If the government collapses and all laws come to an end, the people rampaging around killing and looting are gonna be like, frat boys and 4chan rejects. You can mistrust the bondage raiders all you like but they’re definitely the ones you’re going to run to for help when the neoliberal blood cultists and Nazi meme demons lay siege to your survivor enclave. There’s gonna be gayboy berserkers busting up slaver gangs and burning down warboy frat houses. The assless-chaps leather daddies and weird petplay people are gonna be the accidental peacekeepers of the post-apocalyptic world just because they’re the only motherfuckers who understand the importance of consent anymore.
Listen. Don’t come to me asking how to get the secret cadre of bisexual death commandos to protect your wretched tent village if you’re scared that we might call in the kinksters for backup. I don’t give a shit if they dress up like dogs and spend all day writing poems about butt plugs. There’s assholes out there acting like Vlad the Impaler on a meth bender and you’re afraid of seeing a nipple. Fuck you. If you really want to get rid of the MRA death gangs you’re going to have to accept that a lesbian chainsaw dominatrix or two might be involved. It’s the fucking post-apocalypse my guy we gotta weigh our priorities here
@@
I love these Gothic Fables :
Black Diaspora Gothic
your mother tells you to go find something for her. it’s not there. when she goes looking for it, it reappears, just where she said it was.
this woman is your auntie. that man is your uncle. you have too many aunties and uncles to remember. you haven’t seen them, but they all have seen you. you know, when you were no bigger than THIS?
You start to notice that your mom actually does look like one of your little friends. Too much. More and more each day.
You do have ____ money, but you don’t know where it is coming from. It’s just that every time you put your hand in your pocket you have just the right money you need.
You buy a tin of brand new cookies. When you open it there are only sewing supplies. Tin after tin there are only sewing supplies. You continuously have cookie money, but there are no more cookies.
you are walking down the street. you spot your favorite cousin and wave in greeting. but wait – she has a friend with her. the friend is also your cousin. he smiles. you have never seen this man in your life. it’s fine. family is family.he waves at someone behind you. it’s your cousin. your cousin waves. the legion of cousins waves
as a child, the sizzle of a hot comb or the burn of a relaxer has desensitized yet traumatized you. you tell yourself there’s food at the house just when you think about heading down to wendy’s. there’s always food at the house
you take the chicken out of the freezer.your mother calls. did you take the chicken out of the freezer? of course you did – but the counter is bare. you take the chicken out of the freezer.did you take the chicken out of the freezer? of course you did. you do a double-take. there is no chicken. there is no freezer.<i>did you take the chicken out of the freezer?
You think you might be suffering from amnesia … You could have sworn you just took the chicken out of the freezer but each time you go back to check on it thawing you find it right back in the ice box. Maybe you just imagined taking it out. But this feels like the third or fourth time.. Also, hasn’t the clock read 4:15 each time you remember coming in to take it out? Just 45 minutes before mom is due home. Theres nooo way it’s going to thaw in that amount of time…
you open a tub of ice cream and find rice. you open another, and find chicken; you open yet a third, and find stew. was there ever ice cream in the house? does ice cream exist at all? you don’t know.
that girl? she your 5th cousin twice removed. both your parents got 5+ siblings and those siblings each have 3-5 kids. your great grandparents had 15+ kids and 10+ siblings. that random guy who says hi to you is actually your 3rd cousin his name is Jackson. say hi.
Your mom’s always asking you if you think she looks like Booboo The Fool. You’ve never met this person, but you instinctively know that the answer should be no. One day your mom looks a little different. Is it her, or is it Booboo?
Your mother tells you not to play in your nice clothes. After school you come home and take off your nice clothes and replace them with your play clothes.While out playing with some friends you fall into some mud. You look down and you’re still in your nice clothes. Not the other ones your switched into.In the distance you hear the distinct snap of a switch being made.
You remember there’s food at the house just before you decide to go to Wendy’s. There’s always food at the house. The food is always freshly made and hot, and although there’s a huge variety to choose from, it’s always the same dishes. Cornbread, yams, potatoes, fried chicken, biscuits, green beans, a variety of side dishes but only ever one kind of meat: chicken.You’ve never seen anyone cooking in this house. You know the people in it have full time jobs, but the food is always ready no matter the time of day…or night.
You are not The One. Your mother is not The One.No one knows The One.But everyone knows The One is somewhere.Everyone knows The One is waiting. And if someone finds The One…Pray no one ever does.
You are told to fix your face or it will be fixed for you. My face is a part of your face so are you fixing your face also? You fix your face does my face get fixed at the same time?
There’s just a little clap of thunder, not even full applause. Turn off the TV. Turn off the lights. Don’t touch the phone. Stay out of the tub. Whatever you were watching will never be seen or heard from again.
You go outside to play, but you can’t come back in, because you smell like outside. You smell like an abandoned baby bird. Not her baby bird. How does one smell like inside again? Somehow you get dinner.
Your mother had a dream. She calls every family member living or dead.
grandma says “stop runnin in and out of my house.” grandma says “close the door you lettin all the cool air out.”every time you open one door, a different but similar grandma waits, demanding that you close the next portal to their worlds.
You hear your mom call your name from another room. You respond only to be met with silence. You immediately get up and start running to find your mom, knowing she expects you in front of her ASAP. The silence is deafening. You hear your name called again, this time with a sharper tone. You’re not sure where the voice is coming from but you run around, only finding empty rooms. Again, your name is called with the ferocity of nails on a chalkboard and you panic. Your mother’s voice carries…
You open the Danish cookie tin and find sewing supplies. Your trust has been broken. You have never seen the tins in the store, and when you finally do, you are afraid to look inside. Who are these people that create sewing tins with cookies on them?
There was a party. You made yourself a plate to take home. It was not enough food. It is never enough food. Even though you cooked too, the ribs made by someone you don’t know are the best you have ever had.
the women have been doing your hair since you could sit up. the hands in your head are both familiar and new at the same time. each touch is a memory handed down from women for generations. out of the corner of your eye you see your mother’s mother’s mother’s behind you. stay still. don’t cry. tenderheadedness is a fault. you must suffer to be respectable, black girl child, the hot comb smells of seared ear skin.
Your fave Auntie makes the best potato salad. She is designated potato salad maker by the family. You get to the cookout, your fave Auntie couldn’t come and your not fave auntie made the potato salad.
Your mother tells you to take the chicken out of the freezer before she gets home. You take out the chicken. You take out more chicken. The chicken never ends, the freezer is full of chicken, and only chicken. She gets home, everything you brought up and put on the counter is not the chicken. She is furious.
Your mother tells you to do the dishes. The sink is empty, the dishwasher is empty. You search the house for dishes. You own no dishes. You don’t remember owning any dishes. What are dishes? Who are they? Your mother screams at you to do the dishes. “What dishes?” You cry. “ALL THESE RIGHT HERE!” She screams, pointing at the sink. The dishwasher. The counters. There are no dishes. But you do the dishes.
@@
The X-Men
I’ve been reading the X-Men comics since the 80s and I can fully attest that this is generally true. This really is what most of the plots were in the 80s and 90s. I stopped reading the books in the late 90s, but I imagine this is still true:
A Complete Listing of All The Plots of the X-Men Comic Books
– vampires vs xmen
– god damn it where is [insert xmen]
– youre a better leader. no youre a better leader. no youre a better leader. no youre a b…
– someone dies
– someone comes back to life
– THE XMEN GO TO SPACE
– magneto is in the yard and wont leave
– Time for the annual kidnapping (either Mags and Charlie or Sabretooth and Logan, occasionally others)
– House blowing up builds character
– Put that thing back where it came from or so help me
– the villain is in love with storm but who can blame them
– goddammit give me my body back you’re using it WRONG
– somehow we’ve ended up in a fetish club, let’s just go with it
– we’re revamping the uniforms again! deal with it logan
– our powers are gone! now they’re back! now i’ve got someone else’s!
– who wants more trauma? too late, you’re getting it
– the phoenix force is tired
@@
Introverts
Seriously, this speaks to me for some reason:
@@
Disability
*As a person with one of those unpredictable disabilities, where I have good days and bad days, I just found this post hilarious. Yes, I have wanted to say these things to able-bodied people:
you ever realize how able bodied people just are not expected to do things that cause them excruciating physical pain? like they’re just. not
if i shouldn’t use my cane because i can sometimes technically walk without it, it would just hurt like a motherfucker then abled people should no longer be allowed to use potholders to take things out of the oven because i mean
well they could technically pick up a hot pan with their bare hands. it would just hurt like a motherfucker
It’s lonely at the top, and being one of the rarest and most strategically capable personality types, Architects know this all too well. Architects form just two percent of the population, and women of this personality type are especially rare, forming just 0.8% of the population – it is often a challenge for them to find like-minded individuals who are able to keep up with their relentless intellectualism and chess-like maneuvering. People with the Architect personality type are imaginative yet decisive, ambitious yet private, amazingly curious, but they do not squander their energy.
Nothing Can Stop the Right Attitude From Achieving Its Goal
With a natural thirst for knowledge that shows itself early in life, Architects are often given the title of “bookworm” as children. While this may be intended as an insult by their peers, they more than likely identify with it and are even proud of it, greatly enjoying their broad and deep body of knowledge. Architects enjoy sharing what they know as well, confident in their mastery of their chosen subjects, but they prefer to design and execute a brilliant plan within their field rather than share opinions on “uninteresting” distractions like gossip.
“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
A paradox to most observers, Architects are able to live by glaring contradictions that nonetheless make perfect sense – at least from a purely rational perspective. For example, Architects are simultaneously the most starry-eyed idealists and the bitterest of cynics, a seemingly impossible conflict. But this is because Architect personalities tend to believe that with effort, intelligence and consideration, nothing is impossible, while at the same time they believe that people are too lazy, short-sighted or self-serving to actually achieve those fantastic results. Yet that cynical view of reality is unlikely to stop an interested Architect from achieving a result they believe to be relevant.
Every time I take this test, no matter where online I take it, I always get a hard INTJ result. Here are my results for this one, and you can also take the test yourself. When you guys are ready I would be willing to form our new team of Supervillains:
*You know how there’s always that one Hotep whose always giving advice about what black people coulda and shoulda done:
@
@
*I feel like this probably describes maybe half the white girls I met in college, though. Seriously, y’all need to be watching Bob’s Burgers. My niece swears its hilarious, altho’ she still has not explained the bunny ears.
What “Fratricide” Actually Means: murder of one’s sibling
What “Fratricide” Sounds Like It Should Mean: “Oh my god, they killed Chad!”
@@
*More Introvert humor:
@@
*Me at 3AM and I know I gotta get my ass up at 7.
@@
I have done this thing where I avoided doing something I was supposed to do because I thought the person standing near my goal looked like a talker.
@
@
I feel like there should be an entire industry of people who hire themselves out to be dads, grandmas, and aunties, to single people without families, people disenfranchised from their families, or just people who are separated. These people would act in stereotypical grandma, dad, and auntie manner and shit. Like calling you different types of patries and daddy’s best girl, fixing a meal, telling you to clean your room, asking when you getting married, and being kind of lovingly annoying, like real family.
I have a variety of skills but I have mastered these particular ones. I can daydream for the Olympics, and pissing people off was something I mastered early, with little effort:
I thought this was the funniest one. Basically, just don’t call! I tell my family members, all the time, that they better not call me, unless WW3 breaks out, or they are personally on fire.
This is me after an especially vigorous day at work, or any family get-together:
Quiet!!!
This sounds about right, except I won’t socialize for one day, let alone five.
Tag me! I’m that dancin’ fool in the pink jacket! Heeey!
But which gods, though? I’m just asking for a friend!
I did this all the time when I was younger. As soon as I finished any conversation, I would just walk off. Note: People do not like that shit!
This does present something of a dilemma because…People!
This roundup of some of the best clapbacks on Pepsi’s new ad. Pepsi released a new ad targeting Millennials by using protest imagery. Consequently, everyone involved in that debacle had their asses handed to them, on social media.
Imagine being a human in an alien crew in space and leaving with bright blue or pink hair and the color fades and everybody on board wonders WHY you are losing your colors??? Is it the lack of greens? Are you sad? Angry? They just don’t know??
“Human-Kelly may we have a moment of your time?”
Kelly pauses in her inventorying of the photo-synth plates she’ll be installing after today’s cycle ends. “It’s just Kelly, hellot-Halzar, you don’t have to acknowledge my species every time we talk.” She smiles. “That’s not considered rude for us.”
“Very well hu—Kelly. Erm. May we have a moment of your time?” Many eyes blink earnestly at her.
“Sure. What’s up?”
hellot-Halzar considers. “May we discuss the structural nature of the ship interior and gravity-derived reference values at a later date? At this moment we would like to inquire as to the nature of your corporeal change.”
“Yeah sure—wait my what?”
“There is a mess hall wager.”
“About my –?”
“Concerning your strands,” hellot-Halzar says, gesturing.
“My….hair.” Kelly runs a hand through it. It’s purple as of two ship days ago. “Ok?”
“We wish to know whether the colour change signifies mood, nutritional intake variance, or ….erm….whether your mating season status has changed.”
“My mating season status, huh?” Kelly lifts an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
“Did Jerry put you up to this?”
“Human-Jerry refused to answer our questions about your strands, citing some phenomenon known to your homeworld as ‘famine in missed eek’.”
Kelly snorted. “Tell Jerry he can shove his archaic ideas about ‘feminine mystique’ where M-series stars don’t shine. As for your bet: sorry, it’s none of the above. I changed my hair because my last box of dye was about to expire and because I felt like it.”
hellot-Halzar considers. “chinret-Zer wins then, by technicality: that reason falls within acceptable parameters for ‘mood’.”
“I suppose it does.” Kelly pauses. “Who bet on the ‘mating season’ one?”
“Hmm?” hellot-Halzar had already turned to go and deliver the verdict. They turn one set of eyes back. “Oh that would be Drannuc. He said he smelled a difference in you.”
“Delightful,” Kelly says, instead of explaining menstruation and how that can affect mood, diet, and that technically it correlates to what most of the species on the ship would consider a mating season.
“Next time, instead of betting, maybe just ask questions? And not Jerry. He’s a jerk.”
“Reclassifying human-Jerry as jerk-Jerry. We will approach you with all human queries from now on,” hellot-Halzar says and then continues on their way.
Probably for the best, she thinks with a lopsided grin, and then continues sorting the photo-synth plates to install on her space walk tomorrow.
If a ghost can open cupboards and break things, why not just take a pencil, find paper, write exactly why it’s unhappy, and tape the message on the fridge.
It just became second nature to close all the cupboards first thing in the morning (even though they’d been closed the night before). Which was when things escalated from banging cupboard doors to actually breaking things.
Faucets, door handles, curtain rods ripped from the wall… all the repairs started to add up.
“Look, I didn’t mind having an ethereal roommate, but I can’t afford to keep fixing all this shit. Here’s a pencil and some paper. Just write what’s bothering you–I doubt you could put anything that would be more expensive than having a plumber come out to replace all the faucets again.”
The next morning there’s a scrawl line at the top of the page that devolved into an angry scribbling mess that tore through the page. Two cupboard doors were entirely ripped off.
“I don’t want to get someone in to banish you, but this is ridiculous. Just tell me what you want.”
The second piece of paper is ripped into shreds and several knives are embedded in the wall.
A careful examination of the paper scraps show that it had the same scribbles as the first piece.
A quick trip to the library and a stop at a store later, there are kindergarten workbooks on learning to write spread across the counter.
“Look, I don’t know if you’re just being difficult, but I hope not. So I got an audiobook on learning to read and write, and here are some workbooks for kids–don’t get mad–to teach them their letters. Just press play on the stereo, and work through the books at your own pace. I’ll get more when you finish.”
The first workbook is half-completed before being ripped to pieces, but at least there was no other damage. Replacing it is significantly cheaper than replacing cupboard doors.
It takes awhile, but eventually the workbooks progress to a fifth grade level. These ones are starting to be more costly (they’re bigger, for one thing), but it’s not even the money anymore. Little notes scrawled in a shaky hand appear on the steamy bathroom mirror
Have A gooD dy
Or written in ketchup on the counter (that was a frightening sight the first time)
You R out of MLK
And then one day there’s a message taped to the fridge. The spelling and penmanship isn’t the best, but it’s legible and even signed.
Dear Occupente,
I have haunted this spot for ovr threehunerhudre 300 years. My bones are dust and I am fergotN. I do not have wants to trap me. I am here 4 ever.
I am bord. Lonly.
I am sorrY 4 breaking things.
We be frends?
Syncerly Eloise
I love you, Eloise
@ @
*I feel like this may be Paul Ryan’s life goal:
@ @
*Dog refuses to stay on pillow, is about how I’d describe the people in my life right now. Annoying but lovable inconveniences:
IF YOUR DOG SLEEPS WITH YOU THEN YOU UNDERSTAND THE STRUGGLE
@ @
*Someone needs to invent this:
@ @
*This pretty much sums up America’s politics at this time, yeah:
@ @
*Other than just a general reason to be happy, I’m posting this here, because some troll in the comments, got his ass handed to him, when he stated that these weren’t the best actors.
^ that’s all from a single movie.
Danai Gurira: Tony-award winning writer, plays Michonne on The Walking Dead, one of the most popular series out there today
Michael J. Jordan: Featured actor in popular shows like Friday Night Lights, The Wire, and Parenthood in addition to frequent appearances on film.
Daniel Kaluuya: The star of Get Out, which currently boasts a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and has been in the press pretty much constantly upon release. He was also featured in an episode of the acclaimed series Black Mirror.
John Kani: An actor, playwright and director; while he hasn’t had as much work in America, he’s prolific enough to have a theatre in Newtown Johannesberg named after him.
Winston Duke and Letitia Wright have fewer credits to their names (the former has a consistent role in the well-received Person of Interest; the latter has been cast in Black Panther and Ready Player One in what is hopefully the beginnings of a bright career), but I don’t mean to belittle their successes by leaving them out, and those who aren’t as well known SHOULD be given a chance by big franchises. Lesser known names tend to get big after starring in Marvel movies. I sure as hell didn’t know who Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth were prior to their flagship titles.
But even putting aside how important it is that this film is led by black creators, just because you don’t know these people doesn’t mean that they’re not critically acclaimed in their field, who haven’t put in the work. They have, and they’ve been recognized for it. Consider checking out some of their work before you decide whether or not only two of them are great actors.
I sure your feelings are hurt and you’re a little confused by a movie that’s not made with several boxes of assorted crackers and a token black guy 😂😂😂😂😂
1. I love this post and seeing this person get flamed and have their activity page all fucked up because of it makes me so happy. 2. This is where non-black people misunderstand anti-black microagression. This person was willing to trade their sense of logic just to shit on Black people because to them, it’s worth it. That’s a big part of how y’all talk about us. Watch yourself.3. That person forgot that every black actor in Hollywood has to have twice as much classical training and work…
Hm, gee, I wonder which 2 are meant as the great actors. Which two…. which two stand out for the person hung up on the small number of white people… hmmm…..
Imagine being that racist that you think only white actors can be awesome…Imagine being that racist that you look at the black ones and just go “who?” despite their loooooong list of accomplishments and popularity…
Imagine being so racist, that people are excited for a cast of actors, and you are just itching to tell them not to be excited because the cast happens to be black (and you dont like that)….but a white cast, sure you can be excited.
I never heard of Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Mark Ruffalo, or Chris Evans before their debut in a Marvel film…But unlike some cocks on here, I am not so self centered as to believe that MY personal history of viewing an actor dictates whom is good or not….I also bet similar racists (ppl like wisdomandlogicareking) never said shit about the announced cast of relatively unknown actors of Thor or Cap America, or future films like wtf is the new guy playing young Han Solo?…but just gotta put their two cents in on Black Panther…..because “reason
*Now that television is getting used to the idea of interracial couples, its time for writers and creators to start moving away from the idea that interracial couples only consist of a white person with a PoC.
Prompted by [a question] about interracial couples in media, and the prevalence of White/PoC couples instead of PoC/PoC couples, I started a list of [Interracial Couples Without White People] in live action television. By the suggestion of an anonymous person, I’m opening three new lists.
Note I: If you send me a couple for the list, please tell me their ethnicity in your message. Note II: the ethnicities listed below each pairing are those of the actors’, not the characters. Note III: mixed-race, white passing actors are totally counted as long as they consider themselves non-white, even if the movies whitewashed their characters.
Interracial couples between PoC in movies
Hitch/Sara in Hitch. (Black American/Mixed Cuban latina)
Dom/Lettie in the Fast franchise. (Mixed Black/Mixed Dominican&Puerto-Rican latina)
Cinderella/Prince Christopher in Cinderella (1997). (Black American/Filipino)
Trish/Han in Romeo Must Die. (Black American/Chinese)
Mika/Raizo in Ninja Assassin. (Black British/South Korean)
Patience/Thomas in Catwoman. (Black American/Peruvian Mixed Latino)
Alonzo/Sara in Training Day. (Black American/ Mixed Cuban latina)
Demetrius/Mina in Mississippi Masala. (Black American/British Indian)
Marcus/Lucia in Our Family Wedding. (Black American/Mixed Honduran latina)
Ben/Emily in Seven Pounds. (Black American/Afro-Cuban&Puerto-Rican latina)
Jay/Audrey in Descendants. (Mixed Japanese-Chinese-Korean-Blackfoot American/Mixed race*
*she might be Afro-latina but she’s really only recently started getting substantial roles so there’s just not much on her)
Collins/Angel in Rent. (Black American/Puerto-Rican mixed latino)
James/Laura in Men In Black II. (Black American/Afro-Cuban&Puerto-Rican latina)
Adonis/Bianca in Creed. (Black American/Afro-Panamanian&Mexican latina)
Kay/Robby in The Sapphires. (Australian Aboriginal/Black American)
Dell/Talia in Larry Crowne. (Colombian mixed latino/Black South-African British* *they’re a background couple, but still!)
@ @ *This is a video from Al Jazeera on Japan’s suicide Crisis and how Buddhist Temples (and others) are attempting to combat this issue. 101 East is a series of videos, produced by the Al Jazeera network, covering various social issues across the Asian diaspora. Having had my own bouts with mental illness, the suicide crisis in Japan (and across the world) had always been of specific interest to me. People doing the work of suicide prevention are awesome and truly serving their fellow human beings.
@ @
*So, what we have here are White people, who want to practice a closed ancestral religion, that only exists because of the atrocities that were committed by their ancestors, in the first place. Can I just chime in to say that’s a horrible fucking idea? I’m not even a proponent of any of these religions and I can see that. And how rude is it to call on the ancestors of the people who once served, died, and were tortured and raped by your ancestors, to attempt to get them to do your bidding? Yeah, go for it if you want to fuck up your whole life and curse your family.
anonymous asked:
So i was talking to a white witch about Haitan Vodou and they were promoting that white people should be able to practice it, after a long dicussion their conclusion to my points were “i hate white people” and that it’s basically okay to summon the ancestors of oppressed people by the oppressors because “not all white people have oppressive ancestors”
If those white people have ancestors that weren’t oppressive (which is possible but very unlikely), then there is a chance they came from across the sea on their own and not with Columbus and them, meaning their people came from europe, and there are plenty of religions there. And even if they’re ancestors lived through slavery times and never bought a slave, that still doesn’t give them the right to practice. White people always try to twist things so that it can be ok in their eyes to do whatever they want.
In conclusion, remember white witches, 🗣Just because you contact your ancestors does not mean it is vodou 🗣and 🗣Don’t contact our ancestors, they are not your ancestors, they are ours🗣
(White witches also forget that our ancestors are petty, they will listen to you and say hi and all that, and then fuck your shit up. Don’t try it)
I’m sorry, I just have to comment like this doesn’t even make fucking sense lol. If you have no connection to our ancestors why are you summoning them? It’s not like Gods & goddesses. They aren’t your gahdamn ancestors. Get over it. Why the fuck do y’all never in your lives develop the capability to understand when things don’t belong to you? It’s elementary school shit. Every other poc practice is mostly okay with each other. Y’all are the ONLY damn ones that always feel the need to insert yourselves where you don’t belong, the rest of us mind our own business or enter a practice the right fucking way. That’s why you’re never welcome.
on top of the damn fact that our ancestry is heavily rooted in slavery perpetrated by YOUR people. Like why do you even WANT to mess with that?
Black ancestors were the ones who hid our gods in their mouths through the horror of the Middle Passage and, when they reached darker, more treacherous shores, they let them out in tiny puffs of air. Prayers here, songs there. Lines scratched into dirt in mud houses, away from prying eyes.
It is Black ancestors who, when white (and other) slave owners tried to crush our gods underfoot, hid them behind a panoply of saints. The halos and the bright robes were bright enough that those slave masters never truly saw the expansive, towering nature of the ones who walked with us. Who still walk with us.
It is Black ancestors who, now that we have shifted into a new era, are coming forth, filled with vigor. Empowered as more of us begin to recall their names or, simply lend them energy by acknowledging their existence. We remember. Ancestors are an outstretched hand to us, one that we can grasp simply by calling upon them. One that we can hold through careful cultivation of our bond.
Like, don’t you understand? Our gods are powerful but so are the ones who came before us. Who built bridges for us upon their whip-scored backs. Whose sacrifice – which in many cases, was their very lives – is what gives us enough air in our lungs to call upon them in the first place. For those of us who remember, it is a source of infinite strength that keeps our backs straight and our heads held high. Our ancestors bring with them the force to make things manifest so that WE don’t get crushed underfoot when wahala comes.
And you, oyinbo witch who thinks of divinities like fruit on trees, ripe for your plucking and consumption, you think you can safely tap into that?
Don’t.
Dip a toe into the ocean of our strength and you’ll get dragged beneath the waves. You don’t want to know what waits for you in the ocean deep.
*And some responses to this:
This shit is wild to me white people are literally continuing oppression in others afterlife?!? Like summoning our ancestors would imply you are looking for exchange or favor or something. Which why would you demand that from black ancestors trying to rest from the terror of living with white folks?!! What. That’s horrible.
This literally is not about skin color, I don’t understand why you’re purposely being so fucking obtuse about this, @insanewitchking. Yes, we have common ancestors and shared ground, but you need to remember that some of us have shared ancestors and common ground because of systematic racism, institutional violence, and rape; and in this case, we did not choose to share ancestors or ground with you. They were either taken from us or forced on us. You don’t get to claim heritage to ground and traditions that you murdered your way into, tried to eradicate, and demonized. If you need an example, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Trail of Tears, and colonialism as a whole are all good places for you to start. And if you can’t understand that, then please educate yourself and stay the fuck off posts that don’t fucking pertain to you.
We are not telling you “you can’t practice this because you’re white”, we are saying “do not practice this without going through the proper initiatory channels because you are disrespecting an entire culture, group of people, and spirits otherwise.” Afro-Diasporic traditions like Vodou, Santeria, Palo Mayombe, etc are closed. They belong to specific groups of oppressed and marginalized peoples, and understanding the historical and social context of those people is crucial to properly practicing the religion. Again, see the above paragraph to understand why this is important.
But if you want to be a privileged, disrespectful asshole, and cry your precious White Tears™ because a group of Black people are politely explaining to you that it’s oppressive, inappropriate, and possibly dangerous for you to just randomly start contacting our ancestors, whose oppression you benefit from as a white person, you are the one who isn’t right in this situation. This is literally why certain religions are closed–to keep ignorant ass clowns like you from interjecting yourself into circles that you’re not a part of. We’re trying to educate your stupid ass, but if you want to talk over us, and learn the hard way about poking around in shit that you have no business messing with, by all means, tell the ancestors that “We’re all from Africa originally.” and “All Lives Matter” and “All races have done terrible things and we should just all not be racist.” and that “I don’t see color.” and see what fucking happens.
@ @
This photo needs captioning, immediately!
Here! Have some introvert memes! And please visit the IntrovertUnites website. Its a fun site with lots of information on being an introvert, what it is, how to take care of yourself, how to be in relationships as an introvert, etc.
This is my personal favorite and is highly accurate. (Don’t be calling me out the house after I sit my butt down for the evening.)
Yeah, this one is about right, too. I hate small talk, and trying desperately to remember where the hell I know you from.
“Meaningless ritualized social interaction” were the exact words I used to refer to “small talk” when I was about fifteen. I have simplified things as I’ve gotten older. Now its just called “mindless yammering”.
@ @
And just to lighten things up a bit, here’s some Chadwick Bozeman, my future ex-husband:
LOOK THEY ACTUALLY DO HAVE TOASTERS WITH LITTLE WINDOWS SO YOU CAN WATCH YOUR FOOD GET TOASTED
it looks like toast jail
They’ve been taken into crustody…
bad and naughty slices
are put in the
These are their stories
CHNG CHNG
Source: trouserweasel@ @OMG! Asian Americans are draggin’ Matt Damon on Twitter, because of his new movie, The Great Wall, and I am loving it. Personally I blame Constance Wu for being a good influence. Don’t get me wrong, I like Matt Damon okay, I just ain’t particularly interested in seeing Bourne Goes to China. I knew Asian people had this level of snark in them! I just knew it! I’m so proud.“We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world. It’s not an actual fact,” Constance Wu wrote in a tweet criticizing the film back in July. “It’s not about blaming individuals. Rather, it’s about pointing out the repeatedly implied racist notion that white people are superior to POC and that POC need salvation from our own color via white strength. When you consistently make movies like this, you ARE saying that. YOU ARE.”@ @I am totally here for TTI, or Tiny Turtle Investigator.
Most Black People usually discover they have Nigga Neural Network, or NNN, when a white person does something foolish in public and you somehow manage to find and make eye contact with the nearest Black Person available whether you knew they were in the vicinity or not
Going over Moonlight (2016) again, I’ve noticed Barry Jenkins recurring theme of showcasing Chiron’s (and Kevin’s) backs. In each act (from Lil, to Chiron, to Black) the has a long shot of the subject’s back. (Long Post under the cut)
so if there’s one single trope i’m always down to fight it’s the animal bride (folklore motif 402??) which a lot of you are probably familiar with as the selkie – the fisherman either falls in love, steals her skin to trap her on land/gain power over her, or they fall in love and THEN he steals her skin to keep her from leaving, and either way she spends a lot of time gazing sadly out to sea and then she or her child finds the skin and never returns again.
and that’s awful on a whole lot of levels – it’s not love, it’s control.
BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.
i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…
you know i was going to say maybe she just shouts for her sisters and suddenly you’rerealizing you’ve made a terrible terrible mistake bc you’re surrounded by big fucking birds who are all hissing. but honestly if this swan lady is as aggressively down to brawl as any other generally unhappy swan, then she’d straight up fuck you up on her own. she’d just deck you roundhouse, honestly. you don’t fuck with swans. why does this trope exist
okay but consider this: a woman walks to the park every day and feeds the swans and watches them paddle gracefully around the lake, sighing to see how beautifully they swim.
finally one day, a swan comes up to her and says ‘why don’t you come and swim with us? you always sigh so wistfully to see us on the water, and you would be most welcome to join our company, for you have always been a true friend to our kind’
and the woman says, ‘i can’t swim’
and the swan says, ‘we’ll teach you’
and the woman says, ‘literally i can’t swim, my husband stole my sealskin and should i venture into deep water i would surely drown’
and the swan says ‘your husband fucking WHAT’
the next morning the woman’s front yard looks like this.
and neither the woman nor her husband are ever heard from again, though for very different reasons.
OH MY GOD.
@ @
On Introverts
And my personal favorite, as it happens to echo my exact thoughts sometimes:
*Is it just me or does anybody else just get tired of hearing their friends talking to you sometimes? Like “Would u please shut up!” Only you actually like them, and don’t want to hurt their feelings, so you just grit your teeth and smile.
I think I speak for all of us when I say that it can be VERY annoying to be called names and have people assume things about us that just isn’t true. That being said, books and articles are a great way for non-introverted people to learn more about what introversion is and how to best interact with introverts. Do you guys know of any good books, articles, or other sources about introversion?
Note: This is also a chance for introverts to seek out sources for themselves as well. Learning about oneself is a great way to spend your alone time. 🙂
If you’re an introvert, follow @introvertunites
@ @
Characters that need to just die, cuz yeah I hate this character, too.
We’ve all seen her. The black lady behind the counter. She’s dead-eyed, mono-toned, usually larger than average, and middle-aged.
She doesn’t give a shit about what you need.
She is the personification of red tape. She is always a hindrance, merely there for the white hero and the audience watching to be annoyed at.
The audience rolls their eyes and thinks “Ugh, fuck this lady.” and take that shitty media programmed baggage out into the world when they deal with actual real life black women who work these positions and are often the most patient, helpful, “get you through this system despite it holding me down too” people.
It’s shitty and tired and disgusting and it programs people to see black women as annoying attitude-having hindrances by default.
STOP IT.
@ @ Mocking Stupidity. I reblogged this one for the insult, also I hate coleslaw. Where’s the lie?
@ @
*And finally new nicknames for 45. There’s a whole website devoted to miscalling this “Gibbering Mango”
The Orange Fire Monkey,
The Orange Fire Chicken
Hair Hitler
Top Ten Donald Trump Nicknames
The Donald — Ivana Trump (she first used the term in a 1989 Spy Magazine cover story)
Lord Voldemort — Rosie O’Donnell
Golden Wrecking Ball — Sarah Palin (who was NOT trying to be funny!)
Short-Fingered Vulgarian — Graydon Carter (a nickname Trump hates because he seems to think it implies that he is under-endowed “down there”)
Tiny Hands Trump, Babyfingers Trump and Pixie Fingers Trump — Michael R. Burch (nicknames based on Graydon Carter’s nickname above)
The Most Fabulous Whiner — after Donald Trump described himself to CNN’s Chris Cuomo as the “most fabulous whiner” who keeps “winning by whining”
Fuckface von Clownstick, Man-Baby, Comedy Entrapment and Unrepentant Narcissistic Asshole — Jon Stewart
The White Kanye ― Bill Maher
Trump of Doom — Michael R. Burch (first used in a possibly prophetic Facebook post on September 11, 2015)
Agent Orange — Anonymous
Well, its time for our favorite game show, Tumblr Hoopla, or things we’re making fun of on Tumblr this week. I hope this will lift at least a few of your Monday doldrums.
*The website Psych2Go is full of all these helpful little blurbs. I used to do this first one to my friends, but it probably wont work anymore, if they’re reading this. The second one used to work on my little brother until he got hip to what I was doing.
@ @
*This about sums up the Conservative Republican approach to women’s right to choose, I guess. They’re gonna force women to have kids nobody wants, and then let the kids starve to death, just like in the slums of Victorian England.
@ @
*I still can’t quite pinpoint why this is so funny.
@ @
*Uhm-hm! If I have to see this on my dashboard, then everyone on WordPress should be forced to look at this, too. Enjoy!
I saw these shoes last week and since that moment I have not know peace. My crops are failing, my animals are sick, snakes have manifested physically in my home-
This is Trump’s America
If i had to see this with my own two eyes then so do the rest of you…
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?
THAT is what the rest of the world pictures when they’re asked about America, I’m fucking sure of it.
My EYES ARE BLEEDING!!!
@ @
*When I was a kid, I asked my Mom this question, about some scifi movie we were watching, and her answer was that we had left the planet. I will accept that as a perfectly legitimate answer to why there ain’t no PoC in that movie. That answer doesn’t seem to work for movies set in the past, tho’.
Anyway, if the new Harry Potter movie that is set in NEW YORK IN THE 1920s doesn’t have any black people in it (like the trailer suggests) I am legit going to throw my Harry Potter books in the trash and never look back.
I don’t care whose fault it is. The casting directors, the producers, j.k. herself. I don’t care. That level of disrespect, historical revisionism via white supremacist fantasy is not to be tolerated.
The Jazz Age.
With no black people.
The JAZZ AGE.
Do they have ANY idea how creepy it is that every single fantasy is a world without brown people?
That every magical wondrous place they can imagine, a dominant feature is that we have been scrubbed from every corner?
And where did we go? We’re we driven out? Did they kill us all? When one type of person is overwhelmingly missing there is always a reason.
And what reason will small children of color make up in their heads to answer such a question?
What little cloud will enter their mental sky?
@ @
*Go on Instagram and count how many of these photos show up before Xmas! We know Instagram gays are very clumsy people. I guess lesbians are a lot more graceful, so let them hang your Xmas lights.
@ @
*I’ve been reading a lot about how Baby Its Cold Outside is a date rape song, but guys! sometimes historical context has to be taken into account. Maybe its not an appropriate song for the modern world, but when it was written, it was pretty risque.
It’s time to bring an end to the Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol
Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s.
So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem.
BUT! Let’s look closer!
“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.
See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.
Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.
So it’s not actually a song about rape – in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.
Best explanation of where this song came from I’ve heard, and it illustrates how much things have changed since then.
@ @
I love chocolate cake but even I could only eat one piece of this. Yeah, this cake will be even more moist, after you’ve upchucked the whole thing, into your local toilet bowl.
@ @
*Yeah, that’s definitely Uncle Darryl! Eats three plates of food, takes an extra two plates home, didn’t even bring chips.
@ @
*The soothing, delightful sounds of: Songs of the Cosmos, by five time Grammy watcher, Neil D.
on the topic of humans being the intergalactic “hold my beer” species: imagine an alien stepping onto a human starship and seeing a space roomba™ with a knife duct taped onto it, just wandering around the ship
it doesn’t have any special intelligence. it’s just a normal space roomba. there are other space roombas on the ship and they don’t have knives. it’s just this one. knife space roomba has full clearance to every room in the ship. occasionally crew members will be talking and then suddenly swear and clutch their ankle. knife space roomba putters off, leaving them to their mild stab wounds.
“what is the point?” asks the alien as another crew member casually steps over the knife-wielding robot. “is it to test your speed and agility?”
“no it doesn’t really go that fast,” replies the captain.
“does it teach you to stay ever-vigilant?”
“I mean I guess so but that’s more of a side effect.”
“does it weed out the weak? does it protect you from invaders? do repeated stabbings let your species heal more quickly in the future?”
“it doesn’t stab very hard, it gets us more than it gets our enemies, and no, but that sounds cool — someone write that down.”
“but then what is its purpose?”
“I don’t know,” the captain says, leaning down to give the space roomba an affectionate pat. “it just seemed cool”
this is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard but I thought about it for five seconds and realized that if I were, say, a random communications officer onboard this ship and someone taped a knife to a roomba it would take maybe three weeks before even I was inordinately fond of Stabby. I would be proud of Stabby when I met up with my other spacefleet friends for space coffee, I would tell them about the time Stabby got the second mate in the ankle five seconds before the fleet admiral beamed on board and she swore in seven different languages in front of high command.
also by the fourth day Stabby would be in the ship’s log, he’d have little painted-on insignia, people would salute him as he went by, and someone would hook up a twitter account to tweet maniacal laughter and/or a truly terrible knock-knock joke every time he managed to nick someone.
Someone would almost positively attach a tiny camera and live stream Stabby’s adventures to a media account. Bets would be taken on who is next. Bets have to be ordered to stop being taken on who is next because it becomes a problem for multiple reasons. Bets are taken but quietly on who is next.
At some point someone realizes that they haven’t seen Stabby in a while, no one has seen Stabby in over a day. The cam is running but is completely dark. The ship basically stalls out as everyone stops what they are doing to search for their friend. The confused aliens don’t understand why this nonessential and kind of dangerous piece of equipment has got the entire ship in a fit of worry.
After almost two hours, someone thinks to check a little-used storage room in the belly of the ship. As soon as the door is open, Stabby rolls out and jabs their ankle and then whirls off down the hall about its business. Stabby followed someone in without being noticed, and got accidentally shut in. A ship wide announcement chastises everyone about looking before they shut doors.
“But the doors are automatic,” says the newest alien crewmate.
“I know,” says Kzil’tir. They’ve stopped asking. The explanation is always because humans.
@ @
*I’m also here for Star Trek humor, that includes Spock: fuck-bones:
Starfleet Admirals get worried when Captain Kirk bursts into their offices.
Starfleet Admirals get a little scared when Captain Kirk bursts into their offices followed by Commander Spock.
Starfleet Admirals get fucking terrified when Captain Kirk bursts into their offices with both Commander Spock and Doctor McCoy by his sides.
I love this because I get why the admiral is scared. Kirk bursts in by himself, that’s troubling but not full red alert yet. He’s followed by Spock and oh shit it’s yellow alert because whatever Kirk’s cooking up, Spock is on board with it and if Spock is on board then it means it’s Logical and they’ll probably get their way. But then sometimes they both have insane schemes that somehow Kirk talks Spock into but if McCoy is with them then RED ALERT, RED ALERT, THE VOICE OF REASON IS NOW ANOTHER AGENT OF CHAOS AND WHATEVER THEY WANT THEY’LL GET EVEN IF THEY HAVE TO STRAP FOUR WARP CORES TOGETHER AND RIDE THAT SHIT BACK TO THE MESOZOIC ERA TO DO IT
And if Spock and McCoy arrive without Kirk? oooooohhhH SHIT!!!
@ @
Okay, you have to read this one all the way through. I simply could not stop laughing at this.
April 8, 2015
Dear Mr. Kerin,
It was brought to my attention by your neighbor, John Flink, that you have two garden gnomes on your front lawn that that were not approved by the HOA before installation. Please adhere to the guidelines (see Appropriate Lawn Decor on page 3) and remove them within five business days, or you will be fined.
Ellis Hills is a beautiful neighborhood, and we keep it that way by sticking to these rules!
Thanks!
Linda Hoyt, HOA President
April 9, 2015
Dear Mr. Kerin,
Mr. Flink emailed me this afternoon and informed me that there are now five gnomes on your front lawn. He also said that they are all facing his house.
I don’t know three extra gnomes showed up (unless they’re breeding LOL), or why they are now facing his house. But please be advised that you are now in violation of our Allowed Quantities of Lawn Decor rule (see page 7).
You have four days until you are fined. Please address this issue ASAP.
Thanks!
Linda Hoyt, HOA President
April 10, 2015
Dear Mr. Kerin,
I drove by your house this morning on the way to drop my children off at school and saw your lawn. There are now over a dozen garden gnomes in your yard, all facing Mr. Flink’s house. A few of these have been placed in sexually suggestive positions. I do not think garden gnomes come in these positions, which means that someone (I’m not saying you) placed them as such. Regardless, they violate the board’s rule on Appropriate Lawn Décor Positions on page 9.
Mr. Henrys, you have three days left to comply with the board’s rules, or you will be fined.
Are you getting these emails?
Thanks!
Linda Hoyt, HOA President
April 11, 2015
Dear Mr. Kerin,
I was emailed a picture of your lawn this morning by your neighbor John Flink, and was surprised to find that there are now close to thirty gnomes in your lawn. Not only are they all staring directly at his house, they are now also sexually explicit. After a quick Yahoo search, I could not find any store that sold such “X rated” gnomes. This gives me the impression that you made them yourself.
Mr. Kerin, I don’t know where you’re getting the time or the money to create these monstrosities, but they will not be tolerated. We have children in this neighborhood.
Please be advised that you have two days left before incurring fines.
FYI you are now also in violation of our Sexually Explicit Lawn Décor rule on page 17. Until today, I was not aware this rule even existed.
Thanks!
Linda Hoyt, HOA President
April 12, 2015
Dear Mr. Kerin,
I was woken up by a phone call from John Flink at 6AM this morning. He was threatening to call the police. We have never had the police called in this neighborhood. Not even once. I calmed him down and went over to see what the problem was.
Mr. Kerin, the only time I’ve ever seen an orgy was in the movie Caligula but the scene your gnomes depict on your front lawn makes Caligula look PG. The gnomes are in positions I haven’t ever even imagined, and even if I could have imagined them, I wouldn’t have done so with gnomes!
There are over one hundred of them. I could barely see any grass through the limbs and appendages of the disgusting little men.
One gnome in particular is wearing a shirt that says “John Flink” on it and it is wearing a horse mask. Two other gnomes are treating him like a horse.
This is in direct violation of an HOA rule that the HOA just decided to make. Please see Sexually Explicit Depictions of Neighbors as Lawn Decor in the new edition of the HOA guidelines attached as a PDF.
You have until tomorrow, Mr. Kerin. Also, John Flink has called a lawyer.
Thanks!
Linda Hoyt, HOA President
April 13, 2015
Dear Mr. Kerin,
I don’t know how you did it, but thank you for removing all of the gnomes. I’m glad we could avoid getting the authorities involved!
Since you managed to do it before five business days, there will be no fine, just a warning.
As a reminder, please do not place any decorations in your yard without direct approval from the board.
Thanks!
Linda Hoyt, HOA President
April 14, 2015
Dear Mr. Kerin,
It was just brought to my attention that there is a bright pink decorative flamingo in the middle of your front lawn.
I have also been informed that this lawn flamingo is wearing a thong.
If you do not remove this flamingo within five business days, expect a follow up from Kelly Lawson, as she is taking over as HOA President. As of today I have resigned.
Thanks!
Linda Hoyt
Seriously though, if this was me, my next victim, after it was all over with that one neighbor, would have been Linda Holt. I would’ve started out with just one gnome on her lawn and escalated from there, but have the gnomes doing something completely different, yet still unwatchable.Source: shitroughdrafts@ @*Yeah, this does sound like an introvert problem:@ @Well obviously, the fly is planning to give you some kind of life threatening sickness. He’s got 3 days:
*More introvert facts. There’s an entire website devoted to these little blirps.
@ @
*I’m totally in love with the idea that Finn is Force sensitive, and this person makes some very compelling arguments, for why Finn is a Jedi.
*An analysis of the emotional, and psychological, differences between Finn and Kylo Ren, and their behavior towards Rey:
The parallels between Finn and Kylo Ren are the most direct (and stark) in terms of toxic masculinity. Finn seems to reject this toxicity, whereas Kylo Ren is constantly hung up on performing and proving himself strong enough. They are opposites: especially evidenced by the way they treat Rey – how they define themselves against the chief female presence of the movie.
Like Finn, Kylo Ren is also interested in and impressed by Rey. (And he also first meets her when she attacks him.) But instead of treating Rey like a person, Kylo acts out of aggression, objectification, and self-centeredness. He immediately immobilizes her, Force-faints her, and then carries her, bridal-style, to his ship: old-fashioned, exploitative, and gross. His language towards her is incredibly patronizing: “So this is the girl I’ve heard so much about…” He proceeds to insult her friends and threaten and torture her: violating her mind, using her as a tool but also relishing the show of his own power and the taking of something personal by force. “I can take what I want” is simultaneously a threat, a statement of power/entitlement, and a declaration of how Kylo fundamentally views Rey: an object, something controllable to serve his purposes. When the tables turn and Rey reads him, he is incredibly shaken by the subversion of his own authority and control, and when she escapes, he storms around looking for her in a blind rage, pursuing her with a weapon. Even as she’s beating him in the ensuing lightsaber battle, he has the gall to mansplain her own power to her: “YOU NEED A TEACHER!”
Unlike Kylo Ren, Finn uses Rey’s name throughout the movie. Kylo never calls her anything but “the girl” or “the scavenger,” even when addressing her. While Finn helps others without question, is vulnerable, and demonstrates affection, humor, feelings, and honesty, Kylo Ren is the opposite – all about projecting his own power and lashing out. He takes himself and his image incredibly seriously, valuing himself over others and their goals, treating underlings callously and with violence. Meanwhile, Finn accepts BB-8 as something deserving of his respect and speaks to the droid like a person.
While Finn easily cooperates with those around him, Kylo competes and chokes and throws tantrums, exchanging insults with Hux and belittling him at every opportunity, locked in a power struggle even with his allies. As Finn resists hurting the innocent and then straight-up defects over this, Kylo Ren is the one who orders their murders and then tortures his captives. Where Finn removes, and then ditches, his helmet at the first opportunity, Kylo Ren clings to his completely unnecessary, fabricated mask — a face that is not his own, versus Finn’s sincerity. It’s a powerful metaphor, putting on another face to become something else, to assume power. To disguise one’s true nature. The dark side, like gender, is performative — and the mask, in this case, is literal.
*How Racism attempts to rewrite history so as to erase the accomplishments and contributions of PoC. According to such people, no person of color was doing anything in History, and they actually seem to believe all of it was White. This plays out in everything from the shows we watch to the fiction we read. Medieval historians seek to address this issue.
I want to let you in on the dirty little secret of my field, Medieval Studies: The Middle Ages is incredibly attractive to white supremacists. For people whose vision of a backwards-looking, great world is one with white Christian men in positions of power and the rest of us put in our places, the Middle Ages is a fertile ground for fantasy, where it seems very easy, at least superficially, to ignore the integral role of an incredibly diverse population. There are legends like King Arthur, images like the Bayeaux Tapestries, and long histories of Crusading that, on the face of it, make the Middle Ages look very white and like a world very divided neatly into categories of “us” and “them.”
This vision of a very white, very Christian Middle Ages has been a part of political rhetoric for rather a long time: Anti-feminist politicians exploit their idea of medieval chivalry and courtly love to give their ideas a historical grounding. The British Nationalist party uses the story of Excalibur to promote its vision of a racially pure England. The Crusades, in particular, have factored into that: Crusaders became a favorite theme of 19th-century Romantic writers and thinkers, whose refashioning of these tales were crucial to the creating the popular vision of a very white Middle Ages. T.E. Lawrence, the young British army officer who would go on to be known as Lawrence of Arabia and reshape the map of the modern Middle East came to that region as a student at Oxford writing about Crusader castles. Various European fascist movements throughout 20th-century have adopted Crusader rhetoric. More recently and in our own country, George W. Bush called for Crusade in the wake of 9/11. And the most recent presidential election saw a proliferation of images that have long circulated more quietly in the darkest, most racist corners of the internet that rely on medieval and Crusading themes and images to support both individual candidates and wider worldviews.
But it’s not just political rhetoric: Attachment to a white Middle Ages is also an attitude that has absolutely permeated our cultural outlook: Look at something like the TV version of Game of Thrones and you see a kind of fantasy Middle Ages in which the race politics is incredibly uncomplicated, with a lily-white savior and her dragons redeeming the inarticulate, teeming masses of brown barbarians. It’s a rhetoric that politicians can use because it resonates with the population.
But when we look at the actual Middle Ages in all its complexity, the possibility of this fantasy vision evaporates very quickly.
My department held a round-table and teach-in yesterday in response to post-election Islamophobic and anti-Semitic vandalism on campus. We felt it was important, as scholars in the humanities, to offer a humanistic intellectual response to the changing tenor of campus discourse; we grounded this response within our discipline, with six speakers offering case studies of how different communities have responded to repression within the Spanish-speaking world. (The event was livestreamed and a recording will be available early next week; I’ll post it as and when.) What follows was my intervention. -S.J. Pearce
Dear fellow white women: we have a bad habit of self destruction. We have to stop aligning ourselves with white men. We are not ‘one of the guys’ socially or politically. They have and will actively try to ruin our lives. They only care about us when… …it suits them.
And our alliance with them HURTS NON-WHITE women. This is key! Women of color lead the way. They know how to fight. If you don’t care about non-white women, first fuck you. Second you are just hurting yourself. I’m ashamed most white women went for Trump but that’s only our most recent act of violence. White women: get your fucking shit together.
If you’re a white woman uncomfortable with this kind of call-out, check yourself. We don’t require acknowledgment of basic human decency. There’s a reason WOC mistrust us. If you don’t like it, BE BETTER. And they’ve been telling us this for years. But if you won’t listen … … to them, first fuck you, second listen to me, then: WOC mistrust of WW is founded. We need to get sorted.
I find it so odd that people find guest/host relationships on Westworld even vaguely okay. At best, if you believe that the hosts aren’t sentient you’re looking at a weird “romancing the blowup doll” situation. At worst, if you–like me–believe that they are sentient whether or not they’ve actually “woken up”, then you are looking at an enslavement scenario. If the hosts are human–that is, the next form of humanity as the show has implied–then they are being enslaved. It’s one thing to be intrigued by say the guest-host dynamics, but to act like a host having sex with a guest is just adorable and romantic is very bizarre to me?
is that i feel swindled out of an explanation for why william was the way he was, and why he turned to the dark side so quickly. clearly he had something really disturbed inside of him in order for that change to happen, but we got no real lead-up to it. he went from white hat to black hat literally overnight, and his long-winded voice-over at the end of the episode interspersed with a montage of him being a general evil-doer seemed cheap to me, especially within the context of a show that is supposedly so big on “show don’t tell”. i want to know more about the person he was outside of the park. i want to see how he treated logan’s sister and what happened to him through all the years inbetween. i didn’t “buy” that he just snapped overnight because of one instance where he saw dolores’s insides and realized she wasn’t human. that seemed lazy as fuck to me. it seemed like they were in a super big rush to do this reveal where as it would have been better and more believable to stretch it over another season so we could have seen a bigger and more realistic spiral into darkness for william.
He was already dark. He didn’t turn to the dark-side. All that shit people romanticized with him and Dolores was actually presented in Westworld as gross as it was from the beginning and I LOVE this show for that. Because all too often impressionable young women romanticize dudes seeing a woman’s love as someone redeeming them. Making them better.
When in reality it’s two already complete people, who cooperate and love. William wanted Dolores to be something she was not and CONTINUED see her as that even after she insisted she wasn’t. Dolores is her own person.
William wanted her to be that key for him.
In other words, from the beginning Will was terrible for Dolores.
@
*I thoroughly enjoyed this one, which is a complete rundown of the types of toxic masculinity, embodied by the male characters, in the show.
Introverts are notoriously small talk-phobic, as they find idle chatter to be a source of anxiety, or at least annoyance. For many quiet types, chitchat can feel disingenuous.
“Let’s clear one thing up: Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people,” Laurie Helgoe writes in “Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength.” “We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people.”
Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk.
This is not true. Introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days.
Myth #2 – Introverts are shy.
Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite.
Myth #3 – Introverts are rude.
Click on the links to get the full stories and visit the websites.
“We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world. It’s not an actual fact,” Constance Wu wrote in a tweet criticizing the film back in July. “It’s not about blaming individuals. Rather, it’s about pointing out the repeatedly implied racist notion that white people are superior to POC and that POC need salvation from our own color via white strength. 
Geeking Out about It 