internet radio

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addendum to the latest tale of the patriarchy

So Misogynist Campus Killer didn't kill his girlfriend, or his ex-girlfriend even. Yet, just because it was a MAN killing a WOMAN (and, bless his heart, the man who tried to help her), everyone assumed it was "domestic." The term "domestic" makes it sound like someone spilled milk, like it was a harmless, everyday occurrence, the brutal murder of a young woman by a young man. And because everyone in charge had that mindset, thirty MORE people are dead than would have been if anybody on this earth could take the "domestic" murder of a woman seriously.

Men hate you, it's true. Women are targets, always, just by living and breathing. If any man, ever again, tells me that my awareness, my vigilance, my door-locking, my daily security measures amount to paranoia, I swear to bog I'm going to rip off his head and shit down his neck. I want to say, "Look, buddy, YOU walk through a war zone, where you can't tell who's on your side and who's not, who's dangerous and who's not, every single fucking day of your life, and see if you don't start practicing a little more personal security. Paranoia?! Fuck you."

A woman walking down the street of any city or town is in the same position as an American soldier walking down a street in Baghdad. Only it's all day, every day, your whole life, and sometimes, the enemy lives in your house, or says he loves you, or is related to you.

They don't come with labels: Good Man, Bad Man, Rapist, Thief.

I'm tired of seeing that face of hatred on every TV screen, on every web page. I can't look into his face without thinking: someone had to know this kid was deranged, had been deranged for months or even years, but his misogyny and sociopathy were dismissed, ignored, fell through the cracks. No-one turns into a seething ball of rage and hatred overnight.

more local dialect

I forgot to mention:

If one is to be ill for some time, "He's gonna be stove up for a while."

If one is too tired to do something, she is "too give out" to do it.

And if one is really hungry, it is "about to starve slap to death."

and yet another tale of the patriarchy

Either 22 or 31 people are dead in Virginia, because some entitled tool with a couple of firearms wanted to kill his girlfriend.

So it goes.

another tale of the patriarchy

I'd never been to an opera, on account of all the hollerin', until yesterday. I was persuaded to dip my toe into the subject with a free ticket to a performance of Carmen at USM in Hattiesburg. I'm still processing the experience as it was not quite what I expected. The conventions of musical theatre are, to me, absurd. I don't much like non-operatic musical theater, either, because why break into song when you could just talk? It's ridiculous. Nonetheless, I gave it a try.

People make like opera is this big intellectual serious stuff, but Carmen? Carmen is fluff. It's pretty noises and costumes and a little acting. It's good hair and ruffly dresses. How seriously can you take it, really? I couldn't at all. Which is not to say that an evening at Carmen with good company was the worst thing I could've done on a Thursday evening. It just wasn't at all what I expected.

I noted with interest the tissue-thin plot (if you can even call it a plot), the total lack of character development, and the pretty songs and music. I also noted with interest the contrast between the seductress, dark-haired, gypsy Carmen in her red and black, and the sweetly virginal, pale Micaela, dressed in the blue and white of the Virgin Mary. Naturally Micaela is a soprano, Carmen a mezzo. Women of questionable or dangerous sexuality can't be sopranos, with their innocent, girlish voices! It also, honestly, takes forever for anything to happen. Practically nothing happened in the first act. They spent ten minutes singing about how they were going to stand around the square, smoke, and chat. Maybe twenty minutes; I'm not sure, because it felt like forever.

There was an entire sequence about how seductive the smoking women were, how the smoke was intoxicating, etc., but: no one was smoking! I realize singers don't smoke, it's bad for you, but really, it's fucking absurd to sing about intoxicating tobacco smoke without at least pretending to smoke.

There was a really rotund toreador. I'm all for fat actors, but seriously: a toreador? Those guys are usually rail-thin. When it came time for the chubby toreador and the stout Don Jose to have a knife fight, it really got absurd. These guys were just not built for action sequences.

I must say: the guy who played Don Jose wasn't just singing, he was *acting*, and he was good at it. He kind of reminded me of Jack Black, and I mean that in the best possible way. Carmen was acting, too, but the character is impenetrable, clearly written by a man. She is a cruel seductress, switching from one man to the next every so often, and for this, she dies. Never mind that Don Jose abandoned his fiancee and became a criminal for Carmen, that's okay. It's not his fault. Carmen put a spell on him.

The final scene, when he alternates from pleading and begging to violent rage, frankly made me nauseous. It's domestic violence writ as romance. The first time he slapped her, the romance was over for me. When he wept after killing her, I felt nothing but disgust that he didn't go ahead and off himself. You know? Fuck that guy. She bailed on him, so he killed her. It's the oldest, ugliest story in the world.

In conclusion: opera, just like every other cultural production, is a tool of the patriarchy. It just happens to have pretty music to sweeten the poisonous message.

local dialect

Here in the Piney Woods of South Mississippi, one does not "push" a button, one "mashes" a button.

Also, the word spelled "bye" (as in "goodbye"), it's "bah" not "bi".

And I'm not sure I've ever been anywhere else where people who live outside the town proper live in "the county." (not "the country")

Folks from way out in the county don't say "daddy" they say "diddy".