My year of no gueros.

Inspired by a post by my friend Joy (her blog is linked over there on the right), I decided I've given enough headspace to guero writers.* Who needs more fresh! manly! wisdom! from white dudes, I ask you? I'd been reading the latest Thomas Pynchon and was moseying my way through a pretty annoying T.C. Boyle book when I thought: fuck it. I will put these books down and indulge in some women writers. As it happens, I've been out of town a lot this month, so my year of no gueros, which was to begin June 1, has started off slowly.

I started by re-reading Toni Morrison's Beloved, which I had read in college in a giant hurry, and was completely bewildered by at the time. The book drifts, jumps, and skitters back and forth in time, space, and imagination without warning or clarity, but this time around I was able to make sense of it. I don't know if I was less aware of the sexual violence built into slavery when I read the book as an undergrad, and therefore missed it, or what, but somehow I had forgotten that aspect of the book. It was perhaps the least fleshed-out, most casual references to the horrific sexual violence experienced by minor characters that most took my breath away. The woman who spent her adolescence "shared by father and son" ("the lowest yet", she called it). The guards abusing prisoners on a prison farm. I could go on, but it's more than I can repeat. It is a powerful book, and a difficult read, and I'm glad I picked it up again, twenty years on, with a more finely honed feminist consciousness and the time to move through the book slowly, deliberately, taking breaks when I needed to catch my breath.

Having no time to go out and buy something new just yet, I picked Mansfield Park off the shelf. I also, clearly, needed something a little more lightweight. I keep hoping that I will find a character in MP that I like, but I just don't like anyone in it. Never have. The character study, the plotting, the witticism, all are what I love about Jane Austen, but there's just nobody to grab ahold of. Fanny's nearly spineless, and when she does have a spine, it's because of some overly correct moral compunction. I'm not into religious people. Edmund's boring, Tom's an ass, Henry Crawford an insufferable egotist, etc., etc. The women are mostly dull or vain, except for the abusive Mrs. Norris, who I want to whack with a stick. I think perhaps this is Jane's pointiest book. I won't go so far as to say it's actually *mean*, but it's definitely got an edge.

I'm nearing the end and in need of more fiction, and so I went trolling through Joy's blog for some contemporary women writers to track down. I'm pleased to report that I have books by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, Tayari Jones, and Kathryn Harrison headed my way. I've got some Kate Atkinson queued up but haven't ordered it yet. Book reports to follow, yo.

*I can't find the post I'm thinking of, but you should just go read her whole blog anyway.

so hot no one knows how to act

So I'm walking up to the door of my fave tex-mex joint here in Buttcrack yesterday at noonish, and this little brown mouse comes HAULING ASS up the sidewalk past me. I thought it was a bird or something. I mean, who sees mice running around on hot pavement in broad daylight?* WTF? Fortunately he cruised past the entrance and took off towards the dumpster. I think he was disoriented by the heat. His little toesies were probably fixin to blister from the hot cement. Normally I'm a steady proponent of the "mice aren't cute" school, but this little guy was kind of ballsy, and I guess I appreciate that in a rodent. As long as it's not at MY house.



*You know, "broad" daylight, as opposed to the other kind of daylight. Which is, um, uh... I don't know. Not broad.

Giant Hosta, Niagara Falls

hot.

hot.
omigod, hoooooootttttt.
seriously, it's hot here.

The American Funerary Ritual

So unsatisfactory. So morbid and creepy. So expensive. What a giant racket.

So help me, the person that decides to place my corpse on display will be haunted. I mean it. The people that show up and declaim that it looks life-like will also be haunted. Stick my hull on a boat, set it on fire, and float it down the river, yo. Forget this bullshit embalming, $4000 casket, crappy over-scented floral arrangement, rigmarole. Do not force my loved ones to stand over my corpse and smile and nod and shake hands for hours on end. Ugh. Hate it.

I went to the "visitation" for a colleague's sister the other day, is why I bring this up. I don't know who decided that the bereaved should be forced to play smiling hostess for hours on end, standing in the vicinity of the deceased, but it seems to me sadistic as hell.

I am grateful that my immediate family are as goobed out by corpses-on-display as myself, and we all plan to be cremated. My mom says she will haunt me if anyone plays "Amazing Grace," on account of she thinks it's the most depressing tune in the history of depressing christian tunes. Noted! The last funeral my brother and I attended, my uncle's, some terrible song started playing and we made eye contact because we both had the same thought: HOLY FUCK WE HAVE GOT TO PICK OUR OWN FUNERAL MUSIC BECAUSE THIS? IT SUUUUUCCKS!! Because we are music snobs, and heaven forbid someone play some cheesy-ass inspirational tune with no indie cred what-so-ever.

stupid reasons for eating meat

Here's a new variant I hadn't heard:

"Well, see, plants are alive, too. I have to eat living things to live. Therefore, I eat meat."

Because there's no difference between an apple and a cow. Right.

working on being an ally

Have I mentioned, maybe once or a thousand times, that I love Jay Smooth and his Ill Doctrine? Yeah. I do.

Economy check

In the last, say, six months, amongst people known to me personally:

1 local business closed (Mississippi)
1 systems analyst laid off (Illinois)
1 administrative assistant laid off (Connecticut)
1 local newspaper reporter laid off (Mississippi)

Just keeping track, you know?