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Phoenix (凤凰)'s Log |
2009-10-30:
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1337 hours - *sighs* |
I hate to quote Arnold here, but dear administration bigwigs, FUCK YOU. [Further obscenities removed]. You're splitting hairs and BSing outrageously to justify a law that violates the full faith clause of the constitution and the spirit of the idea of states' rights, not to mention the right to equal protection under the law. It's disgusting.
And now, a few key points about rights and freedoms:
1) Rights and freedoms are not granted. They belong to you whether or not society and the government recognize them. They cannot be taken away from you. To attempt to deny you the exercise of them is morally wrong.
2) Rights and freedoms are not earned. They belong to everyone, regardless of that person's level of morality, criminal status, or any other factor. Nobody is so low that they do not have rights.
3) Rights and freedoms have no meaning if they cannot practically be exercised. If a resource -- education, clean water, shelter, transportation, electricity, gainful employment, medical care, what-have-you -- that is vital to life, decent quality of life, or opportunity is prohibitively difficult to get, that is a violation of the basic rights of the people affected. This includes things being too expensive, not disabled-accessible, remotely located, etc.
4) No right or freedom extends to violating other people's rights or freedoms. Your right to free expression doesn't mean you can assault people, your right to your beliefs doesn't mean you can have people imprisoned for disagreeing with you, your right to use the public roadway doesn't mean you're allowed to mow people down, etc. This is the only restriction on rights and freedoms that is unquestionable, and that's why people can be imprisoned and otherwise penalized for robbery and assault and other crimes that directly violate the rights of others. Where crimes that don't do that fit in is a stickier question.
5) Rights and freedoms are not limited commodities, which must be denied to some because there aren't enough to go around.
6) Being of higher status than other people is not a right. Rights belong to everyone, remember?
Emotional state:  angryOn audio: angry Emotional state: Stevie Wonder - A Time to LoveOn audio: Stevie Wonder - A Time to Love
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| 2009-10-29:
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1409 hours - so, yeah |
The thing that sucks about this illness is that I don't feel that bad, except in the mornings, so I feel guilty for not being in class. Then I think about how sick Merlin was, and I think "I can't risk doing that to someone else" and then I wonder if I'm just inventing excuses. But he was pretty much unconscious on the couch for two days, zombie-like and mute when he was awake and vomiting frequently, burning with fever. This is a bizarre illness, because it seems to have hit me and Malcolm very lightly, Matisse more severely (she's almost never sick) and Mum and Merlin worst. Usually, I get it as bad as Mum, and Malcolm is the one who vomits at the drop of a hat.
Mum rented some videos to make her feel better. We watched Monsters vs. Aliens (my suggestion; it's actually good!) WALL-E (overhyped in my opinion) and some episodes of Underdog, which Mum insists she loved when she was little ("how little?" Dad asked her, and she said "oh, maybe three" and we believed her because that was so not something we would've ever chosen to watch. I've lost my exposure-to-racist-cartoon-portrayals-of-Asians virginity now -- I mean, I'd seen the WW2 propaganda posters, but I hadn't heard the horrible accents. Oh, and there were "Indians" too, and believe me, those quotation marks do not begin to cover the wrongness here.)
Yesterday I picked up the copy of The Ear, the Eye and the Arm I bought on my birthday. It was a remarkable book. Here's the basic outline: the year is 2194, the place Zimbabwe, where three children who are perpetually confined to their parents' mansion to protect them from their father's many enemies sneak out for an adventure, get kidnapped, and end up spending a while enslaved in a former toxic waste dump, living with a group of people who have shut themselves off from the outside world to keep African tradition alive, and nearly being killed by evil interdimensional beings. Er, not at the same time, you understand. Meanwhile, a detective agency made up of three mutants -- the titular Ear, Eye and Arm -- is trying to track them down. It's my favorite genre, the coming-of-age story, set in a setting I'd never seen before. Oh, and it's not-so-subtly feminist, but if I told you much or any of why I'd be spoiling it, because all the Crowning Moments of Feminism are bits where a woman/girl suddenly does something cool when the narrative seemed to be leading up to a man/boy doing it, and they're mostly plot-relevant.
Incidentally, another book we got on my birthday was And Tango Makes Three, because Matisse insisted it was our patriotic duty. Sure enough, there's a good reason it was banned -- Merlin read it and soon announced that he wanted to be a penguin when he grew up. I knew it was promoting the penguin agenda!
Meanwhile, the world keeps on turning....
Emotional state:  aggravatedOn audio: aggravated Emotional state: Stevie Wonder - A Time to LoveOn audio: Stevie Wonder - A Time to Love
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| 2009-10-26:
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1004 hours - well, it's here |
My mum thinks we probably have H1N1 in the house. Merlin's sick as I've ever seen him, I'm having respiratory issues, Matisse isn't awake yet but was snoring (congested-sounding) earlier, and Mum was feeling dizzy last I heard. I'm probably not going anywhere until this is gone, exams notwithstanding. *twitches uncomfortably*
Meanwhile, in profoundly weird news, Crash writer Paul Haggis leaves Scientology over Prop 8 support and I'm left trying to understand why the CoS's homophobia didn't register with him sooner. Trying to "cure" queer people isn't exactly pro-gay action.
Emotional state:  worriedOn audio: worried
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| 2009-10-24:
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2135 hours - and the post-celebratory update |
So, uh, I apparently still can't take Merlin along on a series of errands without him melting down, even if they include the book and game stores. But I had a marvelous time looking through records and CDs and the godawful clothing people abandon at thrift stores, and we went and had a beautiful dinner. I asked for a Margarita and the waitress (who's known me my whole life) solemnly requested my ID and teared up as she examined it, talking about how she remembered when I was a baby and how can this be happening?! Then after dinner my mum conspired with her to have me brought a scrumptious piece of Mexican chocolate cheesecake and everyone in the room sang "Happy Birthday" to me and clapped when I blew out the candle. It just felt right, somehow, sharing that rite of passage with those people in that place.
Mum and Matisse were at the Meeting's retreat today, and apparently Mum -- who wasn't really paying attention to the time -- happened to glance at a clock and realize that it was the exact time, to the minute, that I had been born, and so she'd been a mother for 21 years to the minute then. Afterwards she told me about it, saying she hadn't been watching the clock -- it just happened to be that exact time. Which sort of makes up for the fact that she forgot to wish me a happy birthday when she burst into my room at early o'clock to get something she needed for the retreat. Uh.
Anyway, yeah, pretty good day.
Emotional state:  fullOn audio: full
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1033 hours - hm |
I started getting automated birthday emails from websites I don't use any more last night. I think Mum's going to have to stop being in denial about my being 21.
My dad gave me my present from him -- my NAACP membership card. We're going into town later to try not to buy too many books or records while fulfilling my desire to browse them, and we'll go to the restaurant where the staff's known Mum since she was in college and me since before I was born and I'll order some alcohol to shock the staff.
Emotional state:  awakeOn audio: awake Emotional state: The Kingston Trio - Where Have All the Flowers GoneOn audio: The Kingston Trio - Where Have All the Flowers Gone
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| 2009-10-23:
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1851 hours - in brief |
Today was Mole Day, and I did nothing remoletly appropriate. But, hey, do you know what you get when you have a bunch of moles acting like idiots? A bunch of moleasses, that's what. What d'you mean, it's too late for mole jokes?
Emotional state:  thoughtfulOn audio: thoughtful
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| 2009-10-21:
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2151 hours - today a smile |
I went -- if that's the right word -- to Gavin Newsom's online town hall meeting today. (Refresher for non-Californians, i. e. the majority of you: Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco who illegally married same-sex couples in 2001 and successfully fought the Supreme Court over it, made San Francisco the first and only city in the US to provide universal healthcare, housed thousands of homeless people, prevented statewide budget cuts from affecting San Francisco schools, and is currently running for Governor.) At this point that guy is carrying my hopes for the state. He comes up with strategies to solve unsolvable problems and they get results, and he's not afraid to gamble his career on the chance of making a change for the better. We need leaders like that.
Then I read about Dr. Marci Bowers, who's using her experience providing SRS (she is herself trans) to help victims of female genital mutilation get functional, normal-looking genitals -- for free, since US health insurance doesn't cover "cosmetic" procedures. And I've got a partly-written email to her I'm trying to complete telling her how wonderful I think she is for doing that, because that kind of healing goes so far beyond just the physical, but I can't come up with words.
Emotional state:  hopefulOn audio: hopeful
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| 2009-10-19:
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1122 hours - take a moment |
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| 2009-10-18:
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1807 hours - [SPOILERS] Babylon 5 and Women |
As a sequel to my earlier posts about why I love Babylon 5 and why as a queer person I love Babylon 5 (minor spoiler warnings on both of those, if you've forgotten/are just joining us,) today I want to talk about why as a woman I love Babylon 5. Hooray!
The quick summary: Babylon 5 doesn't have as many women as it really should, but the ones it has are fan-fucking-tabulerrific. Also it does an unusually good job of avoiding many common tropes about women's roles and interactions with others.
( The breakdown: [SPOILER-HEAVY] )
To sum up, then, I judge B5 worthy. It had strong female characters and some very feminist assumptions and attitudes built into the worldbuilding, but suffered from severe numerical imbalance, probably due to subconscious factors (male being the "default") and social conventions (military-themed shows have a male majority.) I still rank it high on effort, and award bonus points for competence -- JMS avoided a lot of the main mistakes men and far too often women make when writing female characters, and wrote his female characters as people first.
Emotional state:  verboseOn audio: verbose Emotional state: Suzanne Vega - Room Off the StreetOn audio: Suzanne Vega - Room Off the Street
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| 2009-10-17:
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1652 hours - the world keeps turning |
Twenty years ago today, I was a wee baby on the verge of learning how to walk. My dad was in San Francisco for the World Series, and Mum and I were at home. I was in my high chair, Mum tells me, when the ground started to shake. She says she picked me up, and glared at the brand-new glass doors and told them not to dare break (they did.) Lost the top of our chimney -- the broken-off bit is still sitting around outside filling up with dirt and stuff. Apparently I stopped trying to walk for a little while.
This was the only major earthquake I've ever lived through. And it seems odd, somehow, to think it's been twenty years.
Time passes. Today my baby brother sat at the table, reading the horrible local newspaper and gulping down tea as he called out interesting items to everyone in hearing range ("it rained 10.28 inches in that storm! Some lady turned 102!") as per family tradition, and I had this moment of being severely weirded out because how can he be old enough to do that? He's ten, which seems a lot younger than it did nearly eleven years ago when I was excited to be in double digits.
And I'm turning 21, which is somehow a lot less scary-feeling than turning twenty was. Twenty's too boring and awkwardly in-between, I guess.
Emotional state:  uncomfortableOn audio: uncomfortable
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| 2009-10-16:
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1518 hours - the commercialization of activism |
Hello, my name is Phoenix, and I believe in boycotts.
I was raised with a strict understanding that my family would not, under any circumstances, buy Nestlé products. No candy, no ice cream, no drinks, nothing we could find that had the brand name anywhere on it, including in the small print on the back label. I elected to not even eat candy I was given on Halloween if it came from them -- not refusing to accept it, because in the dark you can't always see, but carefully sorting it out for uses I can no longer recall. When Nestlé got ahold of Häagen-Dazs, I surrendered my favorite kind of ice cream bar with a bitter sigh but a strong sense that I was doing the right thing. (Wiki article on why, and just one activist site on the matter.) Nor did my family ever go to McDonald's, and I still won't. The idea of not giving money to people who do bad things was firmly ingrained in me from a very young age.
( Ooh, I do love to write long posts, sorry )
Emotional state:  weirdOn audio: weird
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| 2009-10-15:
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2124 hours - and then I was abducted by aliens and locked up with Jack the Ripper |
Hoboy. Today was a Day, it was.
It started when my sister and I were innocently hanging out in the pleasant, grassy area where students hang out in good weather, for it was a bizarrely hot and humid day. We were working on her Spanish, because she had a test today. And everything was fine, we were sitting there on the bench, when this redneck couple sets up a tiger-print blanket on the grass nearby and commences making out. I mean, he took his shirt off and rolled up hers so he could kiss her stomach -- they weren't about to beat that Dutch couple who fucked on top of a cop car with two cops in, but for regular people in a public place they sure were going at it. So there this couple is, making out, and there Matisse and I are doing Spanish, right?
So this dame -- half of the couple here, right -- decides there's only one thing she'd rather do than make out with her fellow there, and that is smoke a cigarette. Never mind that it's illegal, never mind that there are a bunch of people around (and, indeed, the wind was blowing towards me and Matisse, so really never mind the people.) No, she is going to be a classic asshole smoker and light up, right there on her blanket with her thug boyfriend looking on. So I walk over and I say "oy!" and tell her it's not allowed and the wind's blowing her smoke right at me and seriously, what's the big idea? And she goes "oh, sorry!" and snuffs the thing out, and all is well, until at least five minutes later, when...
...they get up and prepare to leave, and suddenly the dude -- a thuggish type, all tattoos and muscle and shaven head, right, big macho man -- yells "CUNT!" at me and they just about run out of there. Yessir, the big tough guy couldn't let some dyke tell his girl off for being a jerk, but didn't want a fight either. For some reason this amuses me.
Then there was ( the potential mass murderer in the stands behind us. )
Emotional state:  drainedOn audio: drained Emotional state: Suzanne Vega - Tom's DinerOn audio: Suzanne Vega - Tom's Diner
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| 2009-10-14:
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2204 hours - D-: |
My mum's trying to teach me how to flirt.
I feel kind of pathetic, to be honest....
Emotional state:  nerdyOn audio: nerdy
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1447 hours - false choices: Obama vs. Schwarzenegger |
I read today a post over at the Bilerico Project arguing against the assertion that Arnold Schwarzenegger is more gay-friendly than Barack Obama. Now, the argument for Schwarzenegger is bullshit: he approved Harvey Milk Day, as far as I can determine, primarily because of the movie (he vetoed it before, as he does damn' near everything, on a flimsy excuse) and not out of any concern over its actual merits, and the other act referenced is non-controversial and hardly revolutionary (though positive.) His anti-gay overall position, which the counter-post hardly touched, and unwillingness to sign anything remotely controversial combine to speak much louder.
My issue with the entire discussion is, however, that comparing the Governator to the President here can be done a number of ways. First, in terms of overall attitude, Obama edges ahead slightly. In terms of attitude relative to respective party, the reverse is true: Schwarzenegger is incredibly gay-friendly for a Republican, while Obama matches the typical Democrat unremarkably and might even be a little to the right of the standard. If we look at number of gay-affirming actions taken while in executive office, Schwarzenegger wins; if we weigh number and significance of pro- vs. anti-gay measures, he probably comes up negative while Obama's nearer to zero. If we factor in Obama's senate record, he edges ahead a little. So the comparison is pretty complicated.
The biggest complaint I have is that it's a pointless comparison, obviously intending to rile up Obama supporters by comparing him to a Republican whose popularity is dwindling (and it's high time, says this longtime opponent of said Republican bitterly,) but not doing so in a meaningful way. The two men are in opposite situations: Obama is a moderate officially affiliated with the left, trying to keep the right mellow, and has a Democratic Congress backing him up, while Schwarzenegger is a moderate officially affiliated with the right, with a Republican minority that he occasionally clashes with in the Legislature and a Democratic majority to contend with. Comparing their actions just makes things confusing, which is of course a good move if you're basically just trying to stir up shit. Shit-stirring, however, is not the right way to do politics.
(My spellchecker recognizes "Schwarzenegger" as a word, but underlines "Obama." How long do you suppose that will last?)
Emotional state:  irritatedOn audio: irritated
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1402 hours - it rained yesterday |
I woke up at 5:30 yesterday, as is my wont on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I have class, and it was pouring rain. The road was hard to see, which is bad in the mountains, and surprisingly deserted; I found out later that the whole school district had canceled classes due to widespread power outages including the high school, accidents on the roads, and concerns that students might not be able to get home again if the roads got closed. Our schools pretty much never close on account of rain; I've certainly never heard of it before.
Crossing the campus to visit a friend and spend some time fully warm and dry mostly saturated my backpack and completely my pant legs. That building had ceiling tiles, which flapped scarily in the wind; my friend felt that a horror film in which people sitting under the flapping tiles disappeared when the scary noise happened would be good, while I kept uneasily glancing up in case a monster poked its head through. Returning for my next class got my hat (a sturdy fedora) and my stubby ponytail soaked through, and finished the backpack, which began to drip out the underside. I investigated the possibility of eating lunch in the cafeteria, which I usually hate, but it was crowded with students who'd had the same idea, so I wound up camping out under the library instead -- my investigations required me to wring out my hat brim again. Also at this point it became impossible to keep the water out of my shoes, because the ground was one big puddle. Matisse, when she arrived, told me that it had been raining about an inch a minute at home, and though our school's closer to the sea and thus usually has milder weather, it didn't seem much different there. At least the power wasn't out (though it was in downtown the-town-my-school's-in.)
The buses were all but empty, partly because there were no high school students out and partly because people whose bus stops had no shelter mostly seemed to have stayed home. The bus leaked in several places; a seat in the back had a large puddle in it that I found kind of impressive in a "holy shit, what D-:" kind of way.
Got home and the power was out, of course. Set nearly all of my clothes out to dry in front of the just-started fire, because the only garment that had not been penetrated completely was my leather jacket (which I had gotten some water in, in the sleeves and pockets, nevertheless) and so the only dry clothes I really had were my underwear and shirts. I was pretty glad the roads weren't closed, I'll tell you.
A sinkhole opened up in front of the house, so a bunch of water was running into it and under the road in a somewhat frightening fashion. My dad got on local TV when he went to get sandbags to fill it in so the huge stream of water would go across the top of the road instead.
I'm a fan of rain in general, but sweet Mary queen of Arkansas was that a lot. And now it's sunny and pleasant as though it never happened, except there's still a lot of water on the ground and in the trees and all the dead needles got blown out of said trees onto the ground.
Emotional state:  impressedOn audio: impressed
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| 2009-10-12:
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1507 hours - NOTHING IS RIGHT |
Questions that have been bugging the crap out of me recently:
-If I drool over a photo of a woman in a mainstream magazine, is that a healthy expression of my sexuality and pro-woman or participation in the enforcement of unhealthy beauty standards that harm women? (Mostly hypothetical, because aside from women I actually know enough about to like for themselves/their work as well as their appearances, I tend to be attracted to moderately to quite chubby women who don't have bleached or straightened hair/too much makeup/obviously photomanipped everything, so the only magazine photos likely to affect me are ones of women with really cool eyes, which are a minority.)
-Where are the women I actually want to drool over, aside from in real life where they can break my heart? I can't even tell these freaking bottle blonds apart half the time, and the brunettes get iffier all the time, and the black women with suspiciously pale skin and obviously fake hair make my soul cry because nobody should have to do that much to be accepted as attractive. Culture, stop fetishizing fakeness and start catering to my tastes!
This post brought to you by the Society for Not Doing Homework Just Yet.
(This post was going to be much better, but I suck at writing today so it's not. Maybe some other time.)
Emotional state: aggravatedOn audio: aggravated Emotional state: Bob Seger - Hollywood NightsOn audio: Bob Seger - Hollywood Nights
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| 2009-10-11:
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1325 hours - NCOD |
Dear Mr. President:
If you want queer people to like you better, stop talking and do something for us already.
Very sincerely,
Phoenix
--
Happy Coming Out Day to anyone who's doing something to acknowledge it. I couldn't make DC and it's not a school day, so I'm not.
Emotional state:  discontentOn audio: discontent Emotional state: Bruce Springsteen - The WrestlerOn audio: Bruce Springsteen - The Wrestler
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| 2009-10-10:
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1656 hours - story update |
My idea from yesterday has turned into a short story. I have written the setup and introduced someone I think might be the main character, who is currently crouching behind a crate preparing to possibly die in a gunfight with the horde of bisexuals invading her gang's territory. (If she dies at this point, of course, she won't be the main character. I don't know. All I know is I keep typing and stuff happens.)
I did some epic hacking yesterday and pretty much everything about my computer is configured to my satisfaction now. Yay.
Emotional state:  accomplishedOn audio: accomplished
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1330 hours - sometimes the news isn't bad... |
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| 2009-10-09:
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1826 hours - contemplating new sci-fi story |
Story idea of the day I'll never get around to writing down: gay bazillionaire, fed up with homophobes and hungry for adventure, founds colony on [suitable planet or moon, terraformed if necessary] as a haven for LGBT people who are not welcomed on Earth. Within a decade, however, it has fallen into civil war, split into a ridiculous number of factions. The white gay men, as the ruling class, are hugely unpopular with the other groups in the society, but said groups can't overcome their differences and work together any more than they could on Earth. Instead, they form gangs based on insignificant differences: the lesbians who believe in butch/femme dynamics control the most territory, but the tenuous alliance between the genderqueer factions and the various transgender gangs against them manages to counter them fairly well, and of course the bisexual outcasts can't be overlooked. It's an all-queer dystopia, and I think it ends up with the entire colony dying horribly, possibly in an explosion.
In other news, I changed distros again. I'm contemplating a post about Linux (why I use it) but I'm not sure I'm ready.
Emotional state:  creativeOn audio: creative
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amused