Honest Conversation Is Overrated
Actual Human Interactions Witnessed Or Overheard
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
When Chic-fil-a decided to be more Openly Bigoted a few years ago, one of my very close friends, a woman who had stayed at my house when she was fighting with her idiot boyfriend, and who had invited me to her wedding before she and her idiot fiance broke up, a woman who introduced me to her best friends: a lesbian couple who lived in the South End, wrote a long post about how she was devoting her free time to protest in favor of Chic-fil-a's freedom to be homophobic.
Because she was my friend, and someone I'd always viewed as an ally, I refrained from being sarcastic, and asked her how she could reconcile the way that company was treating at least four people she cared about (the fourth being the guy I dated through most of our friendship), and she sent this long disconnected Jesus tirade about how Christians were being persecuted for blah blah blah, false dichotomy, metaphorical bible quote taken literally, etc. So I defriended her, and sent her a very brief e-mail telling her that I was disappointed that she valued a fictional version of a two thousand year old dead guy more than her living friends. I didn't hear from her again until the Boston Marathon bombing, where I sent her a reply of "I am unaffected." and presumed, correctly, that I wouldn't hear from her again. Today, in the midst of all the rainbow memes, and wedding pictures, I scanned through my friends' posts and was pleasantly surprised to not find a single argument. Like, REALLY surprised. So it was with much disappointment that I found a solitary post, made by the woman I almost married twenty years ago talking about how "love won when Jesus died on the cross" which is...ASTOUNDING. You'd think that if you were going to be Jesus-y, you'd go with "love won when Jesus rose again" or "love won when...." actually there's not a lot of love in the New Testament, once the whole "let's kill the protagonist" angle starts up. She went on to talk about how difficult it was going to be to teach her children about checks and balances when "there aren't in any in the new America". And how this wasn't about marriage equality rights, this was about states' rights. Huh, where have I heard that recently? As I've been doing more and more often recently, I wrote a long, calm, point about why I disagreed with her status, and then, instead of posting it, I erased it and defriended her. I know there is a sentiment among many of my friends that you shouldn't be silent, and that you should fight through your feelings and argue with people about their ignorance and/or bigotry, but that's not for me. I've long grown tired of trying to use logical thinking when talking to a bunch of metaphor-comprehensionally impaired bigots who belong to really judgmental book club, which is #notallChristians but #yesallliteralists. How can I hope to compete logically with someone who, if he existed, has been dead for so long that he wouldn't even know that calendaric time has started flowing in the opposite order. Also, when I get frustrated with people laying down irrelevant platitudes that they didn't even come up with themselves, but overheard on their news show of choice, I tend to say very specifically hurtful things that I can't take back like "I feel really bad for your children, what with them being homeschooled by a prejudiced idiot." or "I don't think someone who majored in violin at a glorified musical academy is really qualified to be discussing constitutional law." or "As the person who helped finance the abortion you got when you cheated on me, I think you are woefully unqualified to be talking about morality and so-called-family values." but that's not going to solve anything. I'm fairly meticulous with who I am Facebook friends with. I don't expect everyone I talk to agree with me on what kind of poets I respect, or whether the last episode of Lost proved that the show was super racist, but if I see that you've made a post about Barack Obama where you use any pejorative term that dehumanizes him (I'll disagree with you about "stupid", but I won't be mad about it. I understand "disappointing", and any synonym for "liar" is acceptable what with him being a politician and all) or if you want to defend the use of racist imagery or using the law to impose your religion on people, or tell me how woman aren't qualified to (insert anything here...actually anything), then I don't give a shit that we used to go to Middle School together, or that we both really like X-Men comics, I'm done communicating with you. ------I don't want anything from this post. It's not here as a dramatic "if you do X, you better defriend me now!!!111!1!1!" statement. I'm happy to do the work of defriending myself if I see repeated ignorant bullshit. It's mainly that I'm sad that someone I used to be really close to, someone who, granted, has always been from a really weird family, a family who, after they moved west somehow found Jesus in every corner of their house, and at the grocery store, and on their toast, has finally pushed me to the point where I just can't communicate with her anymore --------for those of you who've been around since The Insafemode Journal days, Yes, this is the same woman who called me at work to let me know that she had a half-brother who turned up. She was letting me know because her mother had given him up for adoption and "My mother would never have agreed to meet him, if he hadn't mentioned that he wanted to share with her the gospel of Christ. So maybe if you accept Jesus, you can get in touch with your birth parents." She was unimpressed when I let her know that if I wanted to get in touch with my birth parents, I just had to fill out paperwork with the agency that oversaw the adoption, as I was a ward of the state of Connecticut, not Jesus. And when I informed her that, in fact, my family abandoned Christianity specifically because my former-altar-boy father was told by The Catholic Diocese that he wasn't fit to be a parent, she started to talk about my family's shortcomings. I hung up on her, not just because I thought she was being an insensitive, unChristian ass, but because I was also in the middle of a nine hour shift waiting tables. --------we now return you to your regularly scheduled series of posts about how annoying people are in retail environments
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Today on Bigotry Fail, another oh-so-cheery loiterer comes in and huffs his way around the store. As I fiddle with my iPod, all you can hear is one of the women who works at the upstairs nail salon yakking away on her phone. It's definitely annoying. If it's not her, it's her male coworker. They never stop needing to loudly express themselves to someone smart enough to put enough distance between them that shouting into a phone seems necessary.
Cheery Loiterer rolls his eyes. I nod my head. CL: "I will never understand why those people" UHOH "come to our country" OH NO "and don't even bother to pick up the language." Me: "Well, I can't say that I've ever spoken to the woman in question, but I believe she's Korean." CL: "So?" Me: "So, she's speaking Spanish right now." CL: "Yea?" Me: "How many languages do you speak?" As I expected/hoped CL found this funny, and not antagonizing. I mean, I *intended it* to be antagonizing, but I figured he wouldn't pick up on that. It should also be noted that this Nobel Laureate candidate had wandered around our store for about a minute and a half, had this interaction with me, and then asked where we kept our film. Because he thought we were the camera shop. Overheard In The Store Today:
"You have to really respect Don Lemon, he's a queer Black man who reached the dream of being a huge disappointment to both communities straight white people associate him with. And they LOVE him for it." A couple of Harvard students in their twenties walk into the store. ”No, I’m not interested in the stupid inauguration. I’m so tired of listening to people go on and on about him being the first Black President. People forget that he’s also, technically, the first Asian President.”
"I know, right?" says the other guy. "But I read an article about how the Asians won’t claim him because he looks more Black than Asian." This goes on for approximately two minutes while I bite my tongue harder and harder until I can’t will myself to remain quiet anymore. ”By any chance,” I ask them, “are you two confusing Barack Obama with Tiger Woods?” "No, I—" starts one. "Oh my god, we are IDIOTS." says the second one. "No, I—" "Shhh. We can never talk about this again. THIS NEVER HAPPENED." Walking out in the square, I saw a very dapper looking couple standing outside Whitney’s. The guy turned to his friend and said “Do you believe those people in there are cheering? It’s bullshit. How do those results make anyone happy? Ok, people from Chicago, maybe.”
Turns out, he was talking about the Bulls/Magic game. I just noticed that the bag of cookies my father demanded I take with me when I left the island have a red, white, and blue color scheme, not because they’re from the Fourth Of July, but because they are “Proudly made in the USA.”
Well, thank God. I’m tired of those damned Mexican cookies taking our good old American jorbs. Random Customer: “I am so tired of all the racism in this county. The Republicans calling Barack Obama a monkey. It’s bullshit. All these racist bastards who don’t want to vote for Barack Obama because he’s Black. Don’t vote on someone for their color, you vote on someone for their ideas. To vote on their skin, that’s just wrong. I wish people would call them out on that.” Forty seconds of unnecessary patter go by before he says “I”m really glad Clinton is backing him. Bill, not Hillary. I don’t know why they even tried to run Hillary. Who’d vote for a woman? They’re all menopause and emotions. Too stupid to be President.”
Me: “Didn't you just say you should vote on someone for their ideas, and not their skin tone? So, generalizing by race is wrong, but stereotyping a gender is totally acceptable?” RC: “They’re different. I mean, we can argue over why no one would vote for a squirrel for president, and you could say I was generalizing by species. The two things are not comparable. Women can not ever be Presidents.” And that, your honor, was why I beat him to death with my industrial sized stapler. There is a guy who comes in every week and is an absolute dillweed. Every week it’s the same gripe about how we don’t have some manga starring underage girls. How he wastes so much money driving here, and wishes we would put all of our inventory up on a website. Every week, the same gripes, and oddly misinformed “facts” about comic book and novel distribution.
I’ve never liked the guy. Today, he came in wearing a “Rush Limbaugh, Last Man Standing” t-shirt. I no longer feel bad about judging him. Yesterday, I received an e-mail requesting that I be a part of one of the nationwide rallies to let the world know how upset we are that Americans were open-minded enough to elect a partially African-American president, but not open-minded enough to let gay people marry. While I would certainly love to support the event, I have to work.
Upon learning that I was skipping the event to sell comics, I received an e-mail from Well-Dressed Steve, calling me out for being a bad homo (it should be pointed out that Well-Dressed Steve, though a very dapper dresser, is 100% non-cock sucker): Pshaw! If California had voted to outlaw comic book stores, I'll bet you the gays would have come to the rally to support you. Fairweather friend. Gay people rarely support comic books, literature in general, their friends getting married, and me. Granted, the same goes for straight people. Having worked in seven different comic book stores (all part of the same chain) for the last year and a halfish, I can tell you, there aren't a lot of gay comic book readers in New England. And I know why. There are very few gay male characters in comic books. Plenty of lesbians, and bisexual women (even if you don't count porno comics), but, with the exception of yaoi, not a lot of gay men. I don't read yaoi. It's mostly two-dimensional, black-and-white cheesefests about older men "mentoring" then seducing and fucking younger men. And, being Japanese, these stories often involve giant squids, sentient vibrators, and thirty-seven kilometer cocks. Why would I want to read such drivel? I mean, I already live this kind of drivel. Mainstream American comics, however, don't have a lot of gay characters. In the Marvel Universe (the one I obsessively read/collect) the few gay characters are all drama, no plot. Northstar, a member of the little read/respected Canadian super team, Alpha Flight, infamously came out in issue 106 (1992) while rescuing an HIV positive baby, which may sound like a good story, but it wasn't. Ultimate Colossus's coming out was handled a little better. As opposed to Northstar's homosexuality coming out of left-field, there were many hints an innuendos in the sixty-four issued before he decloseted. I won't even mention the fact that two of the three male gay teens in the Marvel Universe were originally named Anole (hasn't changed), and Assgardian (renamed Wiccan) {I've got no beef with Hulkling as a name). Now, there are some specifically gay, all-gay, oh-so-gay comics out there. The problem is, I haven't found any that I've liked. Someone recommended Stuck Rubber Baby to me about a year ago, and I picked it up, and just didn't care. I find it really difficult to get into biopic comics, unless they're really well-written, like Maus and Persepolis. Which got me thinking that I only really like biopics about people surviving genocide. Two weeks ago, I was reading Dave Eggers's non-comic novel, What Is The What, as well as a new anthology of illustrated journals of real-life refugees (mixed in with a few fictional ones) called I Live Here. I was getting incredibly depressed, and not just because of the quality of Eggers's writing. Too. Much. Suffering. Luckily, right next to I Live Here on the new arrival shelf was Bottoms In Love, an anthology of gay comics by gay writers. Man, that comic needed more genocide. The art was cool, but the writing was hideous. Awful. Bad. Gay. Like the books you find in the LGBTA secton of Borders. Too trite for the literature shelf. If I want to see vapid, shallow, attractive men whining about how hard it is to find another vapid, shallow, attractive man, or how hard it is to be faithful to their vapid, shallow, attractive boyfriends, I'll get a gym membership. Stay the hell out of my comic books. Ummm...way sidetracked. What I meant to say was Penguin Lust. So, I don't see gay people flocking to my rescue, should they vote to ban comic book stores. But being gay hasn't been banned either, just gays being married. And while I certainly support gay marriage rights (and gay divorce rights), and while I have already petitioned the IRS to remove the Church Of Latter Day Saints from their religious exemption status, since those M-holes have spent 14 million dollars influencing the government, ignoring the whole "separation of church and state" thing, which reminds me that hey, marriage is a religious institution, anyway, why is the government involved to begin with? Ahem, Penguin Lust. I will, unfortunately, not be present at any of the rallies this Saturday. But Asterisk will be one of the speakers at the Boston rally. And, I suspect, Ben will be speaking in Northhampton. These are just two of the rallies taking place in Massachusetts. I would now like to devolve myself to toilet humor, and let you know that one of the other MA rallies is taking place at *giggle* The Old *snerk* Creamery in *snort* Cummington, MA. Thanks to Well-Dressed Steve for the heads up on that one. I have never been able to take journalists seriously. I know that not all of them are misinformed sensationalists who flunked out of their community college's liberal arts bachelor's programs, but most of them appear to be. I used to think The Boston Herald was the absolute worst newspaper in the country, even after the creation of Boston's version of the international free daily, The Metro. The Metro, however, is often subversively funny. For instance, they did a story on famous beards, and the photographs included Abraham Lincoln, a guy from ZZ Top, Fidel Castro, and Liza Minella. That's funny. However, without a doubt the worst paper in Boston right now is Boston NOW. On a day when the Metro's cover story was about increasing violence on the streets of Boston, Boston NOW's cover was about how celebrity golf scores are available to the public. The front page story was on how Joe Public had the freedom to look up Tom Brady's golf score. I mean who cares about racial tensions in Louisiana, the war in Iraq, or the fact that Boston is seeing its first rise in crime related violence in over a decade, Tom Brady's golf scores are available at your local golf course. That's not even an important enough story to warrant the cover of the sports page. Are they not aware of the Red Sox threatening to flop out of their division championship? Didn't they hear about the whole video camera/Patriots scandal? Fuck how Tom Brady's golfing is going, he appears to be ready to lead the Patriots to another Super Bowl.
Headlines like this are why most people think the Jena Six are a cover band that play only songs by Janet and The Jackson Five. During tonight's Writing But Mostly Drinking Group (which was more eating and shit talking than anything else tonight), we were discussing the Jena Six, and the the recent hubbub over a local school putting on the "pro-gay propaganda" play, The Laramie Project, when the term ex-gay came up. Apparently the straight white Emerson student population (who makes up 2/3rds of the writers' group) was unaware of recent reports on the "effectiveness" of the Ex-Gay movement (I know there are more recent reports on The Internet but, being as this entry is sort of an homage to "journalism", I'm not going to use more than one source). Basically, one recent study of two hundred and two Ex-Gays found that only twenty-six considered the program a success. Of those twenty-six, eight claimed to not have any "slip-ups". Of those eight people, seven worked for the Ex-Gay movement. The head of an Ex-Gay group called Exodus International in Orlando, said the report presented "opinion and certainly not fact." It should also be mentioned that ninety percent of those interviewed reported long term harm, and feelings of deep depression and the desire to commit suicide. This says nothing of the dozes of "Ex-Gay counselors" sued and/or arrested for molesting the people they're supposed to be counseling. I think a complete guide to the history of The Ex-Gay movement would read like an article from The Onion. I mean, Ex-Gay leaders have molested more children than priests and Republican Senators combined. During the Ex-Gay discussion, someone brought up a possible alternative to the Ex-Gay movement: Cock Suckers Anonymous. So I present The 12 Steps of Cocksuckers Anonymous (with the understanding that this is for male cocksuckers, not females who are welcome to suck cock whenever they please): 1. We admitted we were powerless over cock – that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a vagina greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of vagina as we understood it. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to vagina, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have vagina remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked vagina to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.* 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with vagina as we understood it, praying only for knowledge of vagina's will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other cocksuckers, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. *- "Hey Steve, this is Larry. You may not remember me, I met you in an alley in Manhattan, I was looking for crack, you had a couple rocks. I didn't have any money, so you suggested I suck your cock and...yea...yea, the senator. Anyway...no, no, no, the crack was great, I just wanted to apologize for sucking your cock. Really? Well, I'm flattered and everything but it was wrong of me. Wrong. See I'm in a group, it's kind of like AA, and I'm supposed to make this list and call and make amends to...Oh, no, I still smoke crack all the time. It's the cock I've given up smoking. Which reminds me, I came into a little money recently...no, not literally. Anyway, I can't suck your cock, but I could really go for some crack right now, do you think you could hook me up?" I'm trying to think of some way to wrap this entry up in a nice little bow, but really all I can come up with is that so called journalists are really just a bunch of cocksuckers who refuse to apologize for the current state of The American Media, but that seems cruel. I mean, sure, there are a lot of cocksuckers who will lie to your face (or crotch), but at least they have the decency not to write their opinions about your cock and call them news stories. |
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