The Continuing Saga of “I Can’t Believe She Read That”

Eeeeeeeeeeeebook (yeah, I forgot during the last few posts.  FORGIVE ME)

Thanks to everyone who responded to my last entry in comments or by email—you guys have been a HUGE help.  Keep being awesome!

Kathy Griffin, Official Book Club Selection

Griffin’s memoir, which describes her childhood and her career thus far.

I hate to say it, but I liked this.  Griffin is HUGELY problematic as both a writer and a comedian, but goddamn is she funny.   And weirdly inspiring.  She skipped college and lived with her parents until she was 28, all in an effort to make it as an entertainer—although which kind of entertainer took her forever to figure out!  Dude, Kathy Griffin went to the Lee Strasberg Institute.

Seriously.

Seriously.

Okay, please stop laughing, you’re going to choke.

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This one’s Been Posted and Reposted…

…and reposted again!  Actually, this is from  Fall 2007, meaning that it actually predates this website.  But I love it so much that I just can’t quit it.  Also, check out the bonus comment from my mother that I have included at the end for your edification.  Yes, despite all my protests, my mother HAS read this website.  Once.  While I was standing there.  And even then, only because she knew it made me uncomfortable.

Happy White Trash Thanksgiving

November 27, 2008

I’m going to be at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, which means that the Internet is…primitive, and chances for posting will be minimal.  Ergo, I’m reposting the entry I made last year, back when I was still a vegetarian and savaged Tofurkey while the rest of my family savaged the real thing. Enjoy!

For those of you not in the know, I’m a cracker. Seriously, when I was in the fifth grade this little kid informed me that he was a “black-eyed pea,” and that I was a “cracker.” Which I was totally okay with, because at that stage in life I didn’t have much experience with beans, but I knew what a fucking Ritz was. And I also knew that they were delicious.

For the record, I have never learned to enjoy black-eyed peas, but I love black, kidney, and pinto beans with all my heart. Just so’s you don’t think I’m racist, here.

But anyway, I’m a whitey McWhiterson from Whitesville, North Carolina, and while I feel that my Italian-ness somewhat mitigates all that Wonderbread and mayonnaise whiteness, every once in awhile I just have to face the fact that I? Am a motherfucking honky. And nothing makes me face that fact faster than a visit home with my family for a major federal holiday.

Because nothing makes you realize how white trash you are like having your parents try to force you to look at a dead animal.

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Boneshaker

ETA:  EEEEEEEEEBOOOOOK.

Cherie Priest, Boneshaker

So ever since I posted this picture, people have been asking me what I think about Boneshaker.  Which I find unfair, because HELLO, the Boyfriend stole it and the love of my life my cat from me.  I had no opinion because I hadn’t read it.  Because it was torn from my arms, ripped from my bookshelf, STOLEN BY THAT GREEDY BASTARD I CALL A BOYFRIEND.

But eventually he gave it back and I blitzed through it and then he started asking me about it and my God, what do you people want from me?  What do I look like, some kind of steampunk-analyzing MACHINE?  Oh, and you know what’s even worse than being asked to just throw out a reaction?  Now he thinks he has the right to an opinion about the damn book, too!

I mean, seriously!  THE NERVE!

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Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

I’ve been seeing a lot of FAIL FAIL FAIL lately on the interwebz, and it saddens me because a lot of good people are getting put through a lot of shit just because numerous privileged assholes will not shut the fuck up.  As one of those privileged assholes (white, middle class, what what?),  I unfortunately totally get the thought process behind all the bullshit.  I’ve felt that defensiveness, that entitlement, that certainty that MY feelings were more imporant than SOMEONE ELSE’S lived experience.  Which is why I feel qualified to say a couple of things about it to my priveleged brethren:

1. Being called racist, sexist, ableist, etc. is not some horrible insult.  It is a statement of fact. 
2. Usually, if you read carefully, you are not actually being called any of those things (at least, not initially):  your ACTIONS are.  That’s a crucial distinction.  Please make it. 
3. A person can say or do something sexist (or racist, etc.) without actually being a sexist.  I do it all the time, personally, and I HAVE A DEGREE IN THIS SHIT.
4. Even if someone IS calling you a racist or a sexist or whatever, it will not ruin your life.  Maybe it should, but there is AMPLE evidence that it will not.  Think of a major figure accused of racism/sexism/etc.  Okay, now think about where they are, five to ten years down the road.  Usually, they’re back in the same profession and relatively succesful.  Did it fuck up their career short-term?  Yes.  Did it fuck up their career forever?  Probably not.  So shut your piehole.  Being called out on your crappy behavior is not going to leave you in the gutter, trust me.  Personally, I think it sucks that there are few long-term consequences for even the most abhorrent behavior, but calm down, whitey.  You’ll be fine.  Quit trying to cover your ass so assiduously and maybe try LISTENING for a minute or two
5. Going for the jugular immediately after someone has made a remark you object to is not a mature or valid rhetorical technique.  And yes, this remains true even if the person who called you out was obviously REALLY ANGRY and called you some unfortunate names.  Didn’t your mom ever teach you that it was wrong to hit someone just because they hit you first?  For that matter, how do you know you weren’t the one who hit first, intentionally or not?  Calm down.  Take deep breaths.  Think before you type.

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The Twilight Saga: So. Much. FAIL.

Okay, first let it be known that Robert Pattinson is the wind beneath my wings, the thing that keeps me going in a world full of chaos, etc..  And there is a reason for that (and it predates Twilight).  I wish that I could invite that kid over to dinner, spread towels over all my furniture so that he wouldn’t destroy it with his BO, and then listen to him ramble while he smoked a bowl.  But since that is unlikely to happen, I am glad that Twilight brings him steady employment.  Because that means that I get all the cracked-out, greasy interviews my heart desires.

But.

BUT.

Omigod, y’all.  I read the first 200 pages of Twilight.  I saw the first movie.  I know what happens in Breaking Dawn.  I knew that there was no way in hell that New Moon was going to be a good movie, but I had no idea it could possibly be THAT BAD.

See, thing about Twilight is, it’s awful but it’s tolerable because it’s ALL awful.  Bella is a black hole where characterization should be, Edward is a pedophile stalker, and everyone else gets so little screen time that you kind of wonder why they bothered to cast secondary characters at all.  THINK OF THE SAVINGS!  But I digress.  Anyway, it’s so flat and cardboard and ridiculous that it passes back into being enjoyable because you’re all, “Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?

New Moon, on the other hand, is awful because it has exactly one compelling character:  Jacob.  Jacob is like, actually funny and an actual person with actual interests!  Also, Taylor Lautner has probably destroyed any chance he might have had at having biological children because of all the steroids he took in order to keep this role, but MY GOD, THE DEFINITION ON THAT KID.  I don’t usually say this about people who are young enough that I could have babysat them, but YOWZA.  Guys, he is even cute in his godawful stereotypical wig.  I can’t handle it.  Jacob is adorable and nice and appropriately tortured about the direction his life is taking–he’s upset about being a werewolf because there’s a girl on the reservation who almost had HALF HER FACE RIPPED OFF by her boyfriend when he got a little testy.  And Jacob’s all, “Yeah, you know, it would be nice to not have to worry about that shit, I’m just saying.”  But he’s still funny and innately cheerful because he is a well-rounded character with actual emotions unlike a certain rock-hard marble pedophile we could name.

But he gets totally boned because Bella is in looooooooooooooooove with Edward!  For…no reason in particular!  Even leaving that aside, though, he gets totally boned because he’s the only real person in the main cast, and it’s just like, even if Bella got some sense and decided to forget about her sparklepire, where would that leave Jacob?  With the most boring, personality-lacking girlfriend ever, that’s where.  Seriously, he only likes her because the script demands it–in real life, he would have found someone with interests outside of writing “Mrs. Edward Cullen” dozens of times inside her trapper-keeper.

In conclusion, I just feel bad for the kid, because he gets to spend two more books mired in this shit, and in the end he falls in love with Bella’s growth-accelerated vampire baby.  STEPHENIE MEYER, WHAT DID THE NATIVE AMERICANS EVER DO TO YOU TO DESERVE SUCH TREATMENT?

PS:  Did I mention that all of this is really racist anyway?  Because it’s really racist.  Seriously. 

PPS:  Have I mentioned that listening to poor Taylor Lautner trying to speak a made-up indigenous language to Bella “lovingly” is possibly one of the most hilariously awkward things EVAR?  Because it was.  Bless his heart.

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Friday Morning Musings on White Privilege

I haven’t been called racial slurs very often in my life; when you’re a middle class white girl from the South, it’s just not something that happens on a regular basis.  The only time I distinctly remember being called a cracker, actually, was when I was in the fifth grade:  a little boy declared that I was a cracker and he was a black-eyed pea, and that made him better than me.  I recall being vaguely hurt by this, in the way that you tend to be vaguely hurt when someone you’ve just met takes an immediate dislike to you.  Mostly, though, I was just puzzled.  “Why did he say that to me?” I asked one of his friends after he’d run off.

“He has a bad home life,” she shrugged, and that was the end of that.  My great experience with racism ended with me playing with the kid’s friends while he went home and sulked.

I understand that not every white person has my experiences; I understand that there are, in fact, white people who grow up being the only white kid at school, and that that’s usually not much fun.  I’m not saying it’s okay when those white people ignore hundreds of years of American history and claim that they’re the ones who are really oppressed, but I get it.  I understand taking an extremely traumatic personal experience and making it into a universal one.  What I do not understand are the white people who grew up in situations like mine who try to claim that having individual black people dislike them or mistreat them is the same thing as being systematically oppressed.  And I have a really ugly reason for not understanding that.  Because my reaction has always been, “Why the fuck do you care if someone calls you a cracker?”

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Zombie Walk 2009

So this past Saturday, the Boyfriend and I decided to pretend that we aren’t old and went and did something Halloween-related.  Since our roommate was going to a Zombie Walk in Silver Spring, we were all, “Eh, let’s bum off the single person’s cool factor.”

This is what we were bumming off, folks:

 

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An Open Letter to Disgrasian (Among Others)

I weighed 170 pounds by the time I was twelve years old.  I was maybe 5’1”.

There.  I just established my fat street cred.  Let’s move on, shall we?

This one goes out especially to Disgrasian for this post, but the rest of you in the “progressive” blogosphere should probably check yourselves, too. 

Ahem.  As a past, present, and future fat kid, I’d like to say something to everyone:

SHUT.  THE.  FUCK.  UP.   ABOUT FAT PEOPLE.

I know it’s hard.  I mean, fat hatred is something we’ve been exposed to for literally our entire lives.  Hell, I even remember it coming up in a conversation with a classmate when I was seven!  Amber Goode (seriously, that was her name) was our blond and shining classroom goddess, and she consented to be my best friend for like, a whole lunch period one day.  During that blissful time that I will treasure forever, she said to me, “Debbie, at first I thought you were fat—but then I got to know you and realized that you’re really very nice.”

It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that:  fat = mean and bad.  And seriously, the English language is just FULL of words and images that back up that idea.  Really, who wants to be a bloated, greasy porker?  If you had to pick one of the seven deadly sins, wouldn’t you go with avarice or lust over… gluttony?  And when it comes right down to it, wouldn’t you rather go out fucking or stealing than clutching a drumstick and laughing Jabba the Hut-style?

Yeah.  Fat hatred is embedded in both the English language and our cultural imagination, just like racism and misogyny are.  FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS.  It’s almost like oppressions are connected or something!

Anyway.  So.  You don’t find fat attractive?  Fine.  Whatever.  I’ll deal.  But this equating fat with everything bad and greedy in our culture really chaps my balls.  Guys, this may come as a shock to you, but I—a fat chick!—am  a progressive former vegetarian who buys local and tries to make sure that her meat is raised ethically.  I even quit buying those damn eggs that come from vegetarian-fed hens because I was all, “But chickens are OMNIVORES, that there’s some BULLSHIT.”   I carpool, take mass transit, or ride a moped; I don’t even have a driver’s license.  I own more reusable bags than I can count and I actually use them.  When I go home to visit, my mother—who is also overweight, by the way—yells at me if she catches me drinking a full calorie soda.  Not because she’s worried about my weight, but because she hates it when I consume high fructose corn syrup and thereby support the corrupt and environmentally profligate corn industry.  Oh, and as for our family politics?  When George W. Bush won his SECOND election, my mother and my sister (also a big girl, btw) soothed their lacerated feelings by defacing magazine covers of W.’s face.

My mom won their informal contest by sketching a half-swallowed lizard on Bush’s mouth.  IT WAS AWESOME.

I vote Democrat, I recycle, I eat local, my whole family’s made up of hippies—how exactly am I destroying the world again?  Oh, right, I’m fucking fat.  My chub is going to spread over the globe like a vast ocean and CRUSH YOU ALL.  And afterwards, my pores will rain grease and despair because all I ever eat is BUCKETS FULL OF FRIED CHICKEN FROM KFC.

Y’all, if I wanted to feel that kind of hate, I’d just turn on Fox news.  Please think a little harder and keep that nonsense out of my socially progressive little corner of the internet.  Please.  Do it for the children.  The FAT children.

Sincerely,

Talulah “Mankiller” Mankiller

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Oh Yeah, I’m Kind of a Flake

I keep forgetting to mention that I was interviewed about all things Southern over at Sesquicentennial Madness.  My interview is here, but I would really suggest checking out today’s post.  It’ll break your heart.

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Mondays Suck, But These Books Don’t

It’s a husband and wife double feature!

Oh, and I totally read these on the same day.  Now THAT was some cognitive dissonance…

Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan

Steampunk ahoy!  Deryn Sharp is a willful Scottish lass who, with a little help from her big brother, disguises herself as a boy and joins the army so that she can fly!  See, even though it’s Great Britain in the early 1900s, England already has an Air Force made up of living “beasties” (that’s what Deryn calls them) that were developed by Charles Darwin.  Who discovered evolution and DNA .

Meanwhile, young Alek, the product of a morganic marriage between the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and a commoner (meaning he can’t inherit) is awakened during the middle of the night by his tutors.  They want him to learn how to pilot one of the Austrian army’s giant metal Stormwalkers under cover of darkness.  Why?  No reason!  His dad just thought it would be a good idea for the kid to get in some nighttime practice while he and his mother were off in Prague!

Alek’s parents have totally been assassinated, y’all.  Welcome to World War I, steampunk style!

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