When your job involves facilitating the transfer of shiny gold rocks for goods and services, end of fiscal on June 30th sucks.

But geez, I feel like an old fangirl, these new kids don't know anything about how to properly follow the wank schedule. It's almost July! We should be past warnings and into necrophilia by now!

*shakes cane, demands kids get off her lawn*

Oh, and consider this your general defriending amnesty. Because I barely pay attention to who's my friend or not, anyway. If you can't handle the snark, the cranky, or the general license to call you on bullshit, get out of the pool.

Now, if this is how Twilight had gone, I would have been ALL OVER IT.



karynthia made me do it.

If you liked Jaqueline Carey's Kusheline trilogy, you'll like Green by Jay Lake.

It may be a viral ad for a reality TV show, but it's still awesome.

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THAT BAYOU IS OUT IN COMIC STORES NOW?!?!

If you don't know what I'm talking about, educate yourselves.

And if you DID know this was coming out, YOU ARE SO FREAKIN' FIRED IT'S NOT FUNNY.

were when I was watching this video. I'm posting it all over because I WANT YOU TO WATCH IT.

ETA: They keep taking them down, I will keep reposting!

I am a TIRED pumpkin.

I've decided this week is pretty much a wash, and I'm not worrying over it any more.

Also:

Dear Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield:

WANT CHIKKINZ!

Love,
Mary Sue

Monday Morning Boom, live at my blog. Also available for LJ feed at eatdrinkmarysue.

see more Political Pictures

Every so often I stop and am terrified by the fact that there are over 100,000 items in our warehouse that have been deemed essential for patient care, and I'm in charge of making sure each one is here and available.


Then I remember I'm Mary Sue.

If you're new, the background is that Amazon is marking books with *any* GLBTQ content as 'adult' and stripping them of their sales ranking, effectively making them unsearchable. Amazon's PR has sent out a press release stating it's a glitch! A homophobic glitch!

I'm running into people who are believing the PR rep and shouting me down when I point out a PR rep's job is to make the company look good, not tell the truth.

The shouters are all white, hetero males. It's kind of adorable, and yet sad.

Dreamt last night I was getting married.

I'm a little sick of nightmares, yo.

Migrane yesterday after work.

Which means I did not get to squee here about my newest favoritest show.

Kings. NBC. Sunday nights.

Reason to watch it if you're not a hobbyist Hebrew Scripture scholar: Cross between the best parts of West Wing and Brothers and Sisters.

Reason to watch it if you're not a hobbyist Hebrew Scripture scholar and you are into that kind of thing:
Pretty boys in uniforms!

Reason to watch it if you are a hobbyist Hebrew Scripture scholar:
Retelling of the King Saul and David story!

Reason to watch it if you are a hobbyist Hebrew Scripture aware of modern readings of the story of David and Jonathan:
Jake Benjamin is GAY!

Watch the first episode here, for free!!!!!

As usual, someone said it a helluva lot better than I did. This time it's here by yuki_onna

Stories teach us how to survive. [...] And when we see story after story that has no one like us in it, a book entirely without women, a TV show where white people speak Chinese but there are no Asians visible, a movie set in California without Hispanics, image after image of a world where everyone is straight, and when we are told that it's no big deal, really, there is no race in future societies, that it's not anyone's fault if all the characters are white, that's just how they are, in the pure authorial mind, that we have no sense of humor, that we are ganging up on people because we speak our minds, this is what we hear:

You do not have a right to live. There are no stories for you, to teach you how to survive, because the world would prefer you didn't. You don't get to be human, to understand your suffering or move beyond it. In the perfect future society, you do not exist. We who are colorblind, genderblind, sexualityblind would prefer not to see you even now. In the world we make in our heads, you have been obliterated--even better, you never were. You are incapable of transcendance. You are not worthy of the most essential of human behavior. If you are lucky, we will let you into our stories, and you can learn to be a whore, or someone's mother, or someone's slave, or someone's prey. That is all you are, so pay attention: this is what we want to teach you to be.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I'm going to go work on something for verb_noire.

mpoetess says this:

Very very short version: If you're tired of reading about [RaceFail 09] subject and want to forget about it? You're probably White. Which means you can. Fans of Color don't really have that option, because the problem is going to be there for them whether they have to hear people talking about it or not. It's going to be there for them when they walk away from the keyboard and head off to a bookstore. It's going to be there for them at the bus stop. At work. At the supermarket. You see where I'm going with this? Hopefully? Because that's pretty much the heart of the discussion.

I can pass as white. I have the education, I have the flattened vowels. I have the pale skin and a tiny nose.

I've been told to keep it quiet. I've been told not to align myself as one of those people. I've been told to explain it away when I'm confronted on it. I've been instructed to tell people I'm 'only part Mexican'.

Because that excuses me from being wholly dismissed.

This is hiding. This is being afraid of being discovered. This is passing.

This is destroying the stories. This is dismissing the ideas. This is keeping quiet instead of speaking up.

This is not how I live my life. This is not how I want to live my life. Anyone who has an issue with that, well, that's your issue. Try and hang your issue on me, and you're liable to get it back. Depending on my mood, you'll either get a politely worded 'no, thank you' or you'll get it returned at high velocity, wrapped around a brick.

One thing I have learned about myself through this latest round is how deep the repression has affected me. I have been writing stories since I was 11 years old, when I bought a typewriter from a neighbor at a garage sale.

I lugged it into my bedroom closet, barely two feet wide, closed the door, and typed. I hid the pages under heavy books so no one would find them.

I have stories to tell. But I had been convinced no one wanted to hear them. I tried to make them like the stories I'd read, but they're all flat stories, stories about blonde haired, blue eyed tall Viking women who are orphans with no family.

Write what you know, they say---but what I know isn't being published. What I know isn't reflected in the books I read, in the books other people read. It's not in the TV shows and it's not in the movies. People like me, according to the professional storytellers, don't exist.

And a part of me was always saying that no one wants to hear from a woman like me, una mestiza, a mix, racially, culturally, sexually, a shook up muddled up kind of woman.

I am beating that part of me to death with a big stick. And then I will set its corpse on fire and dance.

From synecdochic, emphasis mine (you'll see it down there).

5. If someone says to me anything that essentially means "you are perpetuating the pain that our society causes me" ("this X is troublesome", "this X is racist,", "this X is sexist", "this X is ableist", etc), no matter how the statement is phrased, I need to immediately stop, take a deep breath, and not even begin to attempt to refute this statement, explain why the explainer is wrong, or offer alternate readings of the scenario until I thoroughly understand why that person is saying this. To do otherwise is to leap to the defensive and cause harm to the person doing the pointing out, especially if the person pointing this out is already hurting.

5.1. In fact, even once I understand why that person is saying such a thing, even if I disagree that X is troublesome or if I believe that X has an alternate reading, this does not change the fact that the person who has pointed it out is hurt by X.

5.2. Historically, the tactic of pointing out alternate, non-racist (sexist, ableist, classist, [...]) interpretations is used to silence the voices of those who are experiencing pain, by attempting to dismiss, trivialize, or explain away their reactions as unimportant.

5.3. Historically, the tactic of pointing out that a different -ism or -phobia may also be influencing or causing the situation is also used to silence the voices of those who experience that pain, by attempting to deflect the conversation to the discussion of a different form of privilege and oppression, thus dismissing, trivializing, or explaining away the reactions of the people who point out the situation.

5.4. I should, therefore, strive not to do either: no matter what my intent might be in sharing my opinion, no matter what my opinion might be, I should constantly ask myself whether adding my opinion will or could be interpreted as an attempt to silence others. I will fail at this more often than I will fail at anything else on this list, because I am an opinionated person and my rhetorical style is often strident. I should not allow myself to use this as an excuse. I should do my absolute best to remain mindful of this trap.

There's plenty of good stuff in it. You should go read it.

ETA: I keep forgetting to pimp verb_noire! GO! Read submission guidelines! Donate the cashy monies! THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME OMG!

Remyth Project

---

The teacher stands at the front of the classroom. Suburban school, caters to the working student.

It's a program in cross-cultural education. At the end, we'll all have master's degrees and be spread through schools in Sacramento, the country's most diverse city.

The teacher says, "In Hispanic families, the father is the head of the household and his word is law. Women are passive to his demands."

I laugh.

Everyone turns to look at me. Once again, I was too loud for these people.

Their eyes demand an explanation for my outburst.

Somewhere, not far from where I'm sitting in class, my grandfather is sitting at the kitchen table. I'm sitting at the other side, and he looks up at me and says, "You are so pretty, bebe. You should wear dresses."

I haven't worn a dress more than once a year since I was ten years old.

"Leave her alone, Joseph," Grandma calls from the other room. "She wears nice clothes!"

"I get no respect." Grandpa grumbles. "You're going to trade me in. You're going to trade me in at the dump!"

"Never, Poppi," I insist.

He points a finger at me. "You just watch yourself."

"That's not how it is in my family," I tell the professor.

She sneers. "Aren't you part white?"

The students turn away from me. I'm no longer an expert on the subject of Hispanic families. I scratch at my arm and go back to my daydreaming.

As many of you know, inside my head looks a lot like a cross between Blues Brothers, Across the Universe, Once More with Feeling, and most all Bollywood musicals.

That's right. In my head, people break into spontaneous choreographed dances.

Why the big leadup? Because you need a big leadup when you're introducing the end dance of Slumdog Millionaire to the Peanut Butter Jelly Time song.

HT to BoingBoing and mental_floss

Because, apparently, if you mention you're a lesbian, you're going to get banned.

The best documentary guy who just balanced Oscar on his chin?

GIVE HIM ANOTHER! I wanna see what he does with two!

ETA: Kate Winslet's father is ADORALBE!