Leva @32: McCain may be in Prescott, but Palin held her big rally today in Colorado Springs, the basecamp and heart of the Dominionist movement. I think that may be the bigger deal, honestly.
This thread is such a delight. It reminds me of a request I made of my partner in planning our future home: that at its center should be a kitchen that smells like garlic, yeast, coffee, and peppers. I want my children to know those smells and remember them connected to warmth, comfort, and love.
It's funny how much that dream home of the future is defined by smells: old books, and roses, and woodsmoke. I guess that sort of proves the point; smells are deeply personal and powerful.
Just this last week, I was in a friend's apartment, and her roommate pulled out a handful of sweet hay for his rabbit, and it brought me right back to helping out in a stable when I was eight years old. That stable was a peaceful haven two doors down the lane from my own house, with a wealth of education on everything from nonverbal communication to hard work to Punnett squares from its owner, a patient woman who saw my interest and nurtured it by putting me to honest work. She was one of my first good queer role models, too. It was a pleasure to be taken back by that smell, and it was the isolation--just the smell of sweet hay in a downtown San Francisco apartment--that reminded me why I love stables so much.
There are so many; I grew up in the high desert, and the first rain hitting the dry pumice dust and pavement gets me every time. I can still smell it for miles off on the breeze, and that first thrill of a storm coming hits me every time.
Old oak and eucalyptus trees, too. Childhood hiding places, safe havens all. Fresh coffee grounds, coupled with the sound of a grinder being shaken upside-down a few times to get the last of the grounds out; my dad used to give it the exact same number of shakes every morning, and I find myself imitating the motion precisely when I do it myself, years later. Sandalwood incense. Clover blossoms, which call up endless afternoons making myself small and exploring the grass and bugs and little things as a child. The honeyed scent of Queen Anne's Lace and Cow Parsnip, and all the hikes where they grew on the river's edge and wafted up that spicy-sweet promise that if you pay attention to the details, it's all even lovelier.
I have an unusually sensitive nose, so I was delighted to discover that the woman I fell in love with smells wonderful pretty much all the time. I was always worried I'd fall for someone whose smell I found offensive, and just have to live with it, but then, considering our brain-wiring, it's entirely likely that I find her personal scent so delightful partially because I love her so much, or even the reverse. I try not to think about it, and just enjoy it, you know?
We had a rough patch for a while and it was torture; I just had to be downwind of her, from yards and yards off, or even just be somewhere she'd been recently, and the smell would drive me crazy missing her. I was at a loss for what to do with a life that didn't smell like her any more. It's such a relief that that's over and we're getting married, rendering the question largely philosophical. It's a funny thing.
This thread is such a delight. It reminds me of a request I made of my partner in planning our future home: that at its center should be a kitchen that smells like garlic, yeast, coffee, and peppers. I want my children to know those smells and remember them connected to warmth, comfort, and love.
It's funny how much that dream home of the future is defined by smells: old books, and roses, and woodsmoke. I guess that sort of proves the point; smells are deeply personal and powerful.
Just this last week, I was in a friend's apartment, and her roommate pulled out a handful of sweet hay for his rabbit, and it brought me right back to helping out in a stable when I was eight years old. That stable was a peaceful haven two doors down the lane from my own house, with a wealth of education on everything from nonverbal communication to hard work to Punnett squares from its owner, a patient woman who saw my interest and nurtured it by putting me to honest work. She was one of my first good queer role models, too. It was a pleasure to be taken back by that smell, and it was the isolation--just the smell of sweet hay in a downtown San Francisco apartment--that reminded me why I love stables so much.
There are so many; I grew up in the high desert, and the first rain hitting the dry pumice dust and pavement gets me every time. I can still smell it for miles off on the breeze, and that first thrill of a storm coming hits me every time.
Old oak and eucalyptus trees, too. Childhood hiding places, safe havens all. Fresh coffee grounds, coupled with the sound of a grinder being shaken upside-down a few times to get the last of the grounds out; my dad used to give it the exact same number of shakes every morning, and I find myself imitating the motion precisely when I do it myself, years later. Sandalwood incense. Clover blossoms, which call up endless afternoons making myself small and exploring the grass and bugs and little things as a child. The honeyed scent of Queen Anne's Lace and Cow Parsnip, and all the hikes where they grew on the river's edge and wafted up that spicy-sweet promise that if you pay attention to the details, it's all even lovelier.
I have an unusually sensitive nose, so I was delighted to discover that the woman I fell in love with smells wonderful pretty much all the time. I was always worried I'd fall for someone whose smell I found offensive, and just have to live with it, but then, considering our brain-wiring, it's entirely likely that I find her personal scent so delightful partially because I love her so much, or even the reverse. I try not to think about it, and just enjoy it, you know?
We had a rough patch for a while and it was torture; I just had to be downwind of her, from yards and yards off, or even just be somewhere she'd been recently, and the smell would drive me crazy missing her. I was at a loss for what to do with a life that didn't smell like her any more. It's such a relief that that's over and we're getting married, rendering the question largely philosophical. It's a funny thing.
Jaime @64:
"Obsession" went into direct-mail and was inserted in newspapers nationwide, and I've heard the mailings and papers chosen were heavily focused on swing states.
I know Oregon was blanketed by them at the exact same time. And the Oregonian had to print an editorial right after about how they don't regulate the content of ads, and they don't turn away paying customers for advertisement, and it was an advertisement, and it's free speech, and anyway, they couldn't find a reason to legitimately not include the DVD. I know there was a protest outside their editorial office.
I'm beyond angry about the whole thing. And no, I don't think it'll be as transparent to everyone all over.
Summer @118:
I've vetted Omid Safi pretty well in research of my own, and I'd definitely consider him a reliable source on the matter--if your quote needs backup.
I'm tinkering with family recipes that I'm only just learning: molé poblano, Pinoy adobo, fessenjun. And then making, and eating. It's going well, so far. I think I won a potluck the other day.
My pie-in-the-sky project I've just started is a (probably-mock-)stained-glass window commemorating my impending marriage, and that's an interesting set of challenges and puzzles to play with for a while.
I do the hand thing too! I was a kid in Ann Arbor, and I've got a bunch of family out in Clarkston who talk, inexplicably, like Yoopers. ...and so do I, when I've been drinking.
Now, of course, I live in rectangly Oregon, whose only hand model is a sideways left hand, thumb curled flat against the side of the palm for the sticky-outy bit with Astoria in. That way the Head line is roughly the Willamette River; the Mounts of Jupiter, Saturn, Apollo and Mercury at the meeting of palm with fingers are the Cascades; and the Mount of Venus is full of delicious Tillamook cheese.
Martin @#46: Daredevil has actually gotten really good writing in the past few years, and there are a couple of big themes that have come up; they would have been ripe for the picking.
The first, of course, is that he;s the lawyer superhero, so you can use him to make big statements about the relationship between law and justice, moral code and legal code, and so on. It also translates into the fact that he ends up doing a lot of charity work--second, see, more than any other superhero I can think of, he's overwhelmingly rooted in his single neighborhood. He's so, so intensely local that the whole neighborhood almost becomes a character trait and symbol. Third, Daredevil, more than most, is always on the verge of a nervous breakdown, because he's always jumping off emotional buildings, and then has to deal with what that does to his loyal supporting cast. And he had a pretty good tagline for a while, while grabbing various low-level baddies and growling into their faces: "Change your life." It's all about renovation. The neighborhood thing again.
Not bad, really. Plenty of material. He took years to get interesting, and I get as tired of Miller's ninja-wank as anyone, but in the last few years, it's actually been one of my favorite titles.
Now, as to The Kingdom--I liked the little documentary as much as anyone, but it was interesting how they made 'Usama and the mujahidin come out of the blue sky, rather than as a distinct response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, aided and abetted and often trained, armed, and funded by, well, us, and often motivated with rhetoric that reacts to colonialism. And they position him with the Saudi Wahhabi establishment, leaving entirely aside that he came from the rich-oil-magnate side that they set up in opposition, as though there's no overlap.
He just came out of nowhere! Some guy! Crazed fanatic with no context and no connection to the US of A! No connection to our friends with the oil, either, just those sinister religious guys in funny hats!
God, I've wasted too many hours of my life on Desktop Tower Defense. A coworker got me addicted.
On the bright side, I owned y'all on the Hard scoreboard.
Oooh! Ooooh!
Any meshugga evolutionary-psychology babble at all!
[Ridiculous unfair situation] is simply the way it is because when We were [some stage of human history really so long ago there's no record and it's all guesswork|chimpanzees|bonobos|some other thing you can only think we ever were if you have no understanding of how evolution works] we did this in order to continue the species, so it's natural and intrinsic and we can't stop. And you can't argue with me, because I'm telling it how it is, with illustrative cavemen.
Look, nobody's going to be interested in your [movement|cause|party|fandom] if you don't abandon [controversial issue integral to group's platform] and compromise with [idea I'm more comfortable with|ideal of your group's opposite number].
You people are just an echo chamber anyway, only interested in bler de bler de bler, blah blah censorship blah oppressing my blah de bloo freedom of ner n'ner n'ner, just like the [distasteful fascists du jour].
I bet you're not who you say. You're really a [man|Vogon|troll even though you're the regular and they're new|double agent|secret shill for the Man|transsexual] anyway.
OH GOD YOUR WHOLE SITE IS ABOUT MOCKING AND DESTROYING [ME|MY MOVEMENT]. ALL OF IT. ALL YOU'VE BEEN DOING IS ATTACKING ME. INNOCENT ME. UNDER ATTACK. ALWAYS. EVERYTHING YOU WRITE IS SECRETLY OUT TO GET ME. EVEN YOUR SCREEN NAME IS A HIDDEN ATTACK ON ME. WHY? WHY DO YOU KEEP HURTING MY FIST WITH YOUR FACE? THINK OF THE CHILDREN.
Fair enough, Lizzy L. I think we can shake hands on that.
Fragano, I see what you're saying, but laws and politics are social constructs, too. And legal constructs don't get put into place without social constructs backing 'em up. Heck, look at all the progress we've made, politically and legislatively, fighting racism; the social attitudes that put bad laws there in the first place are still dragging their feet on catching up.
Now, albatross @ #508: do you really think terms change because people want to play "gotcha games"? Like the whole point is just some perverse lark based on confusing people in privilege, poor dears? I think it has a lot more to do with people in disadvantaged groups getting enough of a voice to start determining what they can be called--rather than allowing someone from outside to name them--which is a huge piece of self-determination. Now, there's internal arguments and social push-pull on those names, but I tend to think it's entirely worth it, if folks get to name themselves instead of being named by others.
It's not about you; it's not for you; it's not because they want to mess with you. It's a natural process of communities getting their own voices and making those heard, and if you pay attention, the words--and people's preferences for them--do matter. Is the word people use to describe my family based on the direction a colonizer pointed when deciding where to march, or based on the country they came from? Based on a neighboring tribe's insulting name based on their perceived habits, or their own word for "nation?"
There are lots of reasons why given words are worth looking into the arrangement of. There's plenty of other important, even more important things to work on, sure, but it's not a "gotcha game." That's incredibly insulting. It suggests that, for example, all of people of color's work to be allowed to name themselves and work that out to their own communities' satisfaction is really just playing around to mess with white people, because, in the end, it must be about and for white people that that work's done. See what I'm saying?
Sure, it's confusing, but so's plenty of the other messes we have to navigate, and it's at least a matter of politeness.
Lizzy L @ 461: The idea of "race" is a social construct. Apart from that very powerful usage, is there a fact of race?
The fact that something is a social construct doesn't mean it's not real. No matter how many fictions the basic ideas of "race" might be based on, it is a real social phenomenon that has significant effects on nearly everyone on the planet.
We don't have to like it, but just because race is fictive or constructed or exists only in the realm of cultural ideas--like the cultural idea that there is such a thing as "race"--does not make it non-factual. Music is a social construct; religion is a social construct; family is a social construct; even the idea of science is a social construct. They are all very real, they all affect us profoundly, even though at some point they were all "made up" based on stuff other than physical, measurable data, even if they're ideas we personally can divorce ourselves from, because the people around us are affected by them. The ones that stick well spread, and when you get enough people involved, the ball gets rolling, and it's beyond any of them--none of them made it, many of them don't even think of these things as having origins at all, and they're--whammo--reified.
Race is, conceptually, deeply problematic. It's based on a lot of bad assumptions about biology, culture, difference, human-ness, absolutely. But whether or not we like it, it's here, and has been for a while; even if the whole concept ceased to exist tomorrow, by some grand effort, "race" would still be factual in the form of a long history of patterns of human belief and behavior, still be affecting everyone at the baseline in the new, "raceless" world, and in more ways than just the effect "racism." You can split these things into an endless fractal of specificities, and in many, many situations, that's desirable, useful, even noble. Nonetheless, the world around you has the idea of "race" stamped on it until we work it out of our collective psychic systems, and it will be rumbling around the globe affecting people.
Color-blindness in policies sounds well and good, but its chief effect, as the playing field currently stands, is to whitewash that complex history. It's just plain not an option for people at the business end of the unpleasant consequences of socially-constructed race. The edifice is constructed. You can want it not to be there, but it is right now, and you can shut your eyes to it, but it might mean walking into a brick wall. I think the social construct of "race" might do with some dismantling, but if I ignore it, I'm likely to walk into trouble, as someone whose racial markers get noticed and acted on by others.
My parents tend to believe in a "color-blind" ideal and are committed to ending racism, in their way. They recognize that race is a problematic concept. But that doesn't reduce the tensions they have to deal with living in an interracial marriage. It didn't stop people from vandalizing their house post-September-11th because people thought they were Arabs. It just kept my folks from figuring out why their house, and not the neighbors', was vandalized, which made it harder to predict and catch the vandals.
Specificity and precision are great, but precision is part of the problem here. If you're looking at racism and how to make it go away, you just can't do that without looking at race. The other stuff--socioeconomic class, ethnic origin, culture, so on--they're components, but they're also their own animals. You want to target racism, it's a big problem not to be targeting a nasty system based on race, just because race is constructed. Racists buy into it and act on it. Antiracists deal with it, too. Putting a hand over that part of the picture because it shouldn't be there is only going to make it really hard to figure out why this guy hates that guy; why this family is systematically disadvantaged, in the health care or school systems; why that person is seen as unelectable.
That's not buying into "race" or racism. It's getting all the information you can about the situation.
"Race," the concept, is indeed misleading. Talking about it isn't; too many phenomena are based on the sociocultural belief in race, not that other stuff, and we can't fix that if we don't talk about "race" specifically.
#313: Brown vs. Board of Education overruled. Move along now, nothing to see here ...
The really horrifying part is that they overruled Brown v. Board of Education by citing Brown v. Board of Education, arguing that because these attempts to remedy racial inequality categorize students by race--y'know, the disadvantaged ones, the advantaged ones, making sure they mix--it's judging them on the color of their skin, not the content of their character, so they're racist.
Two angles on that:
1. Paying attention to black and Latino students' being black and Latino in order to see about getting them better opportunities is racist, because it identifies them as black or Latino in the first place. Boggle.
2. Integrating schools is racist toward white people, because they're getting "judged" for "being white." They're being discriminated against, argued Justice Roberts, based on their race--poor oppressed white kids!--by not being favored by programs designed to offset problems with racially-divided "separate-but-equal" schools. Boggle.
I just--I honestly don't know. I thought last week's Supreme Court rulings were bad, but this...this...and the fact that Roberts justified himself by using Brown v. Board of Education and the words of MLK, Jr...I just don't know what to say. This is just astonishing. It just hurts.
Well, on top of the eminent Mr. Olmos and the says-she's-not-really-Chicana Jessica Alba playing sci-fi marquees all over, we all seem to be forgetting Morena Baccarin; a pretty good argument can be made for Brazilians counting as Latin@. Her Stargate character isn't of any Earth race, or course, but Inara Serra's arguably some projected sort of Latina, if anything.
As to #51: ...I don't think either Filipinos or Latinos identify Filipinos as being Latinos.
That's actually a funny question. I noodled a bit with it here, and I didn't come to much in the way of conclusions. Filipino status, as far as category, is a hard one to pin down.
High-flying cranes, Uzza, Manat--
Intercessors, (adding al-Lat)
('Till the Prophet, he loaded birdshot!)
Still, They're good enough for me.
#192: And there's the good ol' Southern "Bless your heart" which means anything but.
Oh my yes. But then, I've also been known to slather on the "duckling," "bubbeleh," and "querida," so.
But, well:
Pueo's eggs got sat on
Then blasphemers got shat on
The priest, he kept his hat on!
And that's good enough for me.
Dude.
Coming from Ashkenazim, Filipinos and Norski Midwesterners, I have to admit I do the same thing, alternating "oy," "ay," and "Heavens to Betsy!"
Really, it works.
Heavens to Betsy.
Well, good evidence the union is blessed, anyhow. Congratulations to the lot of you.
Okay, that's...that's horrifying.
Maybe I'll actually recover enough to, uh, converse in a bit. I'll be shuddering, meanwhile.
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