To the Fragile, Conservative Few

It must be very hard to have your beliefs challenged nearly every single day.  It must be exhausting, indeed, to have to defend yourself, your choices, your "lifestyle" all the time to your detractors.  (I know it's exhausting over here to fight for those human rights.)  It must be tiring to be constantly questioned, especially when you find yourself unable to come up with answers to those questions.  And when you do find yourself ever so slowly inching away from those antiquated, racist/sexist/homophobic views, you probably want encouragement.

I imagine you want praise for gradually moving down the spectrum from "Complete and Utter Bigot" to "Somewhat Intolerant."  Maybe a nice pat on the back or someone to say, "Congratulations on your trek to fully evolved human being!  You are doing the right thing!"  Perhaps a participatory ribbon that says "Not a Complete Asshole...Anymore."  You want acknowledgment of your journey toward enlightenment, and I know there are people out there who will kindly and patiently give you such.

But let us be clear:  that person is not me.  It will never be me.

It is not my job to praise you for doing the absolute minimum when it comes to not being a conservative dick.  It is not my duty to measure your painfully slow progress and give you a cookie at each teeny benchmark.  I have no time for your fragile ego; my time is too busy spent fighting tooth and nail for those basic human rights that you can't seem to accept.

Image Compliments of RogueNegro.com

Movie Review: Doctor Strange

Leonard finally made it out of the house to see a movie!  And there was much rejoicing throughout the land.  We opted for a date with just us and our favorite pasty Brit, Pumpernickel Cumbersnatch.  Before we get into the review proper, though, trailers!

• I hadn't seen the trailer yet for Logan.  If there was ever a perfect pairing of a trailer and a song, Logan with Johnny Cash's rendition of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" was it.
• There was much chair-dancing and internal squeeing when the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 trailer came on.
• Matt Damon and The Great Wall:  what the fuck is that shit??  It seemed very,....I don't know.  Too much.  Too much CGI, trying to shove too much awesome into one package, the incredibly wrong vehicle for Mr. Damon.  Aha!  This blogger sums up my feelings accurately:  "general disdain, not for inserting fantasy into history, but [for] doing it badly."

Now onto our regularly scheduled goodness:  let's address the White Elephant in the room.  Whitewashing.  In fact, I'm going to come back to this because I need to do some research.  Let's write my other thoughts down first. ==> All done!  So Tilda Swinton.  She is amazing.  And I'm all for previously male roles being given to women; rather being made into something androgynous, and especially played by someone as breathtakingly beautiful/androgynous as Tilda Swinton.  But not at the expense of whitewashing a non-Caucasian character.  And it's not like they tried to simply make The Ancient One a woman; they changed him/her from a man born in "land high in the Himalayas" to a (bald) Celtic woman.

Yeah, that's not even a little bit similar.

That's quite a difference.
This article explains the studio's decision a bit, but completely ignores the race/ethnicity factor.

Just to make sure I wasn't overlooking something, I looked up the original Doctor Strange comics as well; however, I can't find evidence that Dr. Stephen has been anything other than a gray-at-the-temples white dude:

You, sir, are no Sherlock Holmes!

Thoughts on the movie proper, in bullet-point style as we do around here:

1. Benedict Cumberbatch.  Benedict.  Ben.  Benny.  Can I call you Benny? Maybe just 'Dict.  You know I love you.  I have loved you since before most people even heard of Sherlock.  You starring in an honest-to-goodness superhero movie seems like the merging of all of my interests.  I would gladly pay money to listen to your basso profundo rumble across my eardrums, even just reading the phone book.  Or a take-out menu.  (Although I vote for phone book because it would take longer.)  -- in your original, natural dialect.  Your U.S./American dialect needs work, my love.  Some British actors can get it and it doesn't sound weird in their mouths (Hugh Laurie comes to mind).  But yours:  several vowel sounds were a bit "off" (like in the word "chart") and "r" sounds were odd, which is a distracting thing when one's character's name is "DoctoR Stephen StRange."  And perhaps it was an attempt to take the beautiful clipped British diction/enunciation out of the picture, but your words often sounded slurred -- and not just when your character was coming out of a drug-induced surgery/coma/car accident.  When I caught the mid-credits scene, my first thought was "Crap, more of this!" but hopefully it means you'll have more practice between now and the next movie.  Call Hugh Laurie, get the name of his dialect coach, and get back to me.
2. The Award for Best Sidekick goes to...The Cloak of Invisibility Levitation!  Chiwetel, my friend, you've been upstaged by a costume piece.  Seriously, I loved the cloak, and it nearly upstaged all y'all.  It reminded me a bit of the magic carpet in Disney's Aladdin; however, Aladdin's sidekickery was spread out across the magic carpet, Abu (the monkey), and almost Robin Williams as the Genie (although he was such a genius he was pretty much the star of that movie and was upstaged by no one, let alone a costume.  Or rug.).  The Cloak added a fair amount of levity (see what I did there?) and even got an "Awww!" out of me during the mirror scene.  Speaking of the comedy...
3. Dying is easy; comedy is hard.  Recent film-makers (in the past decade or so) have hopped onto the Joss Whedon bandwagon of mixing humor with cosmos-shaping derring-do's.  In his words:  "Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke."  With most things, Mr. Whedon makes it sound easy, but it is, indeed, a fine balance of using some humorous bits to diffuse intense, dramatic situations; better than just defusing, the really great artists make it come out of nowhere where you'd never put that funny bit.  This movie attempts that balance, but ends up a bit heavy-handed on both ends of the spectrum which then comes across as "trying too hard."  This is nit-picky stuff on my end, but the balance of the comedy and the timing just wasn't quite there.  The funny was trying too hard, too obviously to be funny; the drama was slightly pretentious, and the back and forth between them only highlighted these disparities, rather than balancing them.  Which brings us to #4..
4. Benedict IS funny.  I know he is.  I've seen it before.  It's a very dry sort of British funny (as Sherlock Holmes) and sometimes just flat-out silly (as himself), but it's there.  However, the comedy (as written) in Doctor Strange did not do him any favors.  The rhythm of this particular humor, which has a sort of American cadence to it (if I may be so arrogant to say so) did not find its way into my Pumpernickel Bendersnatch's delivery.  Like #3, it just wasn't quite there.  In this kind of situation, a director/producer has two options;  retrain the actor (read:  give them line-readings) OR rewrite the dialogue to a patter(n) that better fits their skills.  I think the latter would have been feasible here; play to Wonderland Bandersnatch's strengths, please.
5. Fancy hands.  I love fancy hand movements!  Whether it's sorcery, illusionists, card tricks, or Michael Moschen as David Bowie's hand-double, I love 'em!  Wish I didn't have tiny hands; I can't even snap my fingers.  

   

   That's right.  The Goblin King doesn't spin his own balls.

6. Wong.  Wong is awesome.  Wong's real name is Benedict Wong; the levels of meta happening here are just delightful, as is Wong's portrayal and (eventual) laughter.

Moral of the Story:  don't look at body scans and drive....unless you want to be a SUPERHERO!!!!

End result:  I did enjoy it.  Will I purchase it when the time comes?  Absolutely, don't ask stupid questions.  Do I hope for improvements between now and the next Doctor Strange movie?  For love of all things Marvel, YES.

I didn't write this, but I could have.

They Say You Can't Go Home Again

I say why would you want to?

I often have recurring dreams of the house and neighborhood in which I grew up.  In the dreams, I'm usually coming back to the house or subdivision after having been away for quite some time (just like in real life).  But in the dreams, the roads are longer and more desolate.  The house is quite a bit bigger, similar to how my little eight-year-old self might have seen it.  It's almost always night, and sometimes there are large dogs involved.

It doesn't take a Freudian scholar to analyze the messages my subconscious is sending to me.  My brain replays the images of my youth, distorting them to show the fear and sometimes abject terror I felt growing up.  The anxiety and anger is there, too; I often wake up feeling irrationally angry.  In the dream I may have been screaming in anger and throwing punches, things I was never able to do when I lived at #6 Tompkins Drive.  Of course, even in the dreams the punches are unsatisfying; the anger feels impotent.

I feel I should insert a disclaimer here:  there are people who fared far worse than I growing up.  Compared to them, I'm sure my childhood looks like middle-class paradise.

I haven't had these dreams in quite some time -- crap, I'm even getting teary-eyed just writing about them -- but lately I've been haunted by the fact that I did go back one time and snap some photographs of my childhood home.  My father's family has long since left #6.  There were no people to visit, just blank places to stare at.  The fact that I did go back and take photographs is disturbing to my mind because I can't quite remember which memories are real (from my childhood), real (from the return trip), or just recollections of my vivid (and disturbing) dreams.  Perhaps seeing the photographs will help me clear up the confusion.

I had planned, I think, on posting the photos on my old blog (really old, like that site doesn't even exist anymore), but just never got around to it -- which translates into, "It's too heavy to deal with, so I'll put it off."  So I decided to look back at those pictures, post them here with perhaps some small descriptions attached, and maybe lay to rest a few ghosts, though certainly not all.

Imagine my surprise when, just now as writing this (and multitasking, as usual), I brought out the external hard drive, looked through my files from that Thanksgiving road trip, and found one.
Just one photograph of the house in question.  None of the roads leading up to it, the signs of the subdivision, not even the fence or the yard of the house.  Just one lone picture of an innocuous ranch-style house.

I don't know whether to cry or vomit or both.  I was actually looking forward to a small bit of catharsis by seeing and attempting to describe things that hold so much negativity for me.  I was really looking forward to clearing up in my brain what was real and what was false.  But now I can't.  It's just the same Swiss cheese muddle it was before.

I think the fact that I took only one picture is somewhat telling.  I took over seventy pictures on that road trip -- of me, of my dog, of the apartment building I grew up in, even a couple of my old high school.  But the house in which I spent seven years of hell?  Just one plain photograph.

Still I suppose I can tell you about that one photograph:

The house is now a light beige color (as shown).  When we moved in, it was a delightful light peach color.  Not a pink house, but my little girl heart thought it was close enough.  Within a few weeks, my stepmother demanded that it be repainted.  Something about light-colored houses getting too hot; I don't really know.  So they picked out a new color, and sometimes I'd get to help paint.  The new color?  A dark, I'm-not-getting-enough-water-so-my-stool-is-really-hard brown.  The house looked like a giant glob of mud.

See the window on the far left?  That window was home to one of my greatest achievements as a former food-hoarder.  I used to hoard food for years, sticking snacks and crackers and cookies in various drawers and coat pockets.  My dad and stepmother could never quite figure out why my bedroom had a near-constant infestation of ants.  I used to spend hours watching the ants eat the poison they put out, but that's another story.  One winter I managed to sneak a frozen fudge bar (or fudgesicle, if you will) all the way from the kitchen freezer down the hall to my bedroom on the corner of the house there.  When my stepmother came in to inspect my room (as she did after every time that I had to clean it), she looked in, judging as usual.  My heart pounded in my chest because the fudgesicle was stored in that window between glass and the storm window on the outside (so it would stay cold, of course).  The thick wooden window frame (maybe two inches wide all the way around) kept my fudgesicle hidden from view.  When she left, I enjoyed my tasty frozen victory and said a silent "fuck you."

And that's all she wrote:  that is where this particular post, originally started sometime in 2013, ends.  And I think that's where I'll leave it for now.  For more on houses, monsters, and childhood terrors, see "The Long Road Home."

Everything Is Easier in the County

I was kind of proud to live in the city.  Not proud in a "Look at our great and thriving metropolis!" way, but in a "Yeah, I'm a bad-ass motherfucker because I know how to live here and not die" way.  That being said, my Unit and I will be hard-pressed to move back now that Disaster Destruction Displacement 2016 has happened.  Everything is simply easier in the county.

It is no longer a pain in the ass to take out the trash.  I no longer have to lug the trash to the back door, down steps to the patio, through the yard, unlock the the six-foot-tall wooden privacy fence, and then trek down the back alley to the dumpster.  My Unit no longer has to insist on watching me do all of the above from the window to make sure that I am not accosted or assaulted (even in broad daylight) during said trash-schelpping.

Now we step outside to the backyard, plop the bags into the trash bin (either over the chain link fence or walking through the [unlocked] gate).  Once a week, my Unit wheels the bin to the end of the driveway.  Easy peasy.

Speaking of driveways:  holy shit, we have a driveway!  And a garage!  We no longer have to wonder and worry:  will we have a parking spot when we come home?  Will "our" spots be available (not really; it was public parking)?  Will we even be able to park near our home or on our same block?  Will neighbors and strangers alike have parked multiple vehicles up and down the street?  Will people who don't know how to parallel park take up more than one spot per vehicle?

No more stress and no more ritual cursing of Lent and Catholics and fish fries (okay, I probably still will, but for different reasons).  We are guaranteed safe and clean off-street parking each time we return home now.  Additionally, we no longer have to worry if we'll wake up to vandalized cars, car windows smashed, trash strewn in the yard, trash thrown on our front porch, porch lights shot out by BB guns, air conditioner units stolen, or used tampons tossed in the gangway¹.

No more additional taxes!  That 1% additional income tax if one lives or works in the city?  Gone!  Take some other suckers' money, ZMD!

Even the laundry is easier in the county!  This particular house has laundry facilities on the main floor, so no more taking my life in my hands by lugging baskets of laundry up and down treacherous city basement steps.

Not all safety and laundry is guaranteed in the city.  I am well aware of that.  I also sometimes worry that I'll lose my parallel parking skills or that I'll become lax and forget to lock my car doors or I'll start leaving valuables in my car.  But I gotta say,....life is a whole lot easier than it was.

¹Yes, all of those things have happened, including the tampon.

Further Leonard Adventures

Yesterday, on my drive home two separate and incredibly disturbing things happened.

Thing #1
A driver changed lanes and moved right behind me.  No, that's not the disturbing part.  I saw the driver in my rearview mirror, and s/he was grinning at me.  I did not recognize this person.  They had white hair cropped short and I still don't know the person's gender; I couldn't tell (and it's not really relevant to the story).  But s/he appeared to be grinning at me -- not just smiling, but full on, teeth showing, grinning.

I didn't know this person.  I tried to surreptitiously look around me.  Was there something hilarious happening around me on the highway?  Was the back end of my car suddenly amusing?  I don't have any bumper stickers on my car nor do I have a vanity license plate, so there was nothing funny for the grinning person to read.  I was wearing sunglasses, so the person couldn't seem me continuing to glance in my rear view mirror to check on them.  But every time I did, they were still grinning.  Their FACE WASN'T MOVING.  AT ALL.  Just frozen in that psychotic, unblinking, perma-grin, with several white teeth showing.  For the next quarter of a mile in stop-and-go rush hour traffic.

And all I could think was, This is what happens when you tell women to smile all the time!  We get psychopaths following us down the highway with a facial expression that would give Jared Leto a run for his money.

He's so much prettier when he smiles!

Thing #2
Not ten minutes later during the same commute, I was nearly killed!  Well, if not killed, then nearly severely injured!

I was in the exit lane to go from one interstate to the other, and traffic was backed up.  We were all at an almost complete stop, brake lights for as far as the eye could see.  And it wasn't a sudden "oh crap, everyone is stopping!" kinda deal.  We were pretty much on our brakes from the time we turned on our blinkers to get into that lane (those of us conscientious drivers who actually use our blinkers, that is).  So I'm sitting there, paying attention to the cars in front of me, and when I hear super loud tire squealing from behind.

I immediately glance out my side mirror, and I can see a burgundy car barreling toward me.  The driver who was immediately behind me pulled all the way on the shoulder (to the right), another driver was pulling toward the left, to get out of this maniac's way.  The maniac (a young woman, BTW) started to pull toward the left as she was squealing her brakes and narrowly avoided slamming into me -- me, who had nowhere else to go.  And then she had the nerve to still try to get into said exit lane.  I gestured broadly Please!  Go Ahead!  I didn't want to be anywhere near her.

Is it any wonder I continually look for jobs that would allow me to work from home?  Oh, except I don't have a home (see:  Disaster Destruction Displacement 2016).  More on that later...

Book Review: Poison or Protect

Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Let it be known that I don't often give five-star reviews. So for a novella to earn that from me,...well, that's kind of a big deal. But when I finished Gail Carriger's Poison or Protect I was satisfied, for lack of a better word. I couldn't think of something I'd want to change or rewrite or edit; there was nothing dangling in my head as "unfinished."

It is the mark of a good writer that s/he can make us feel affection for villains, or, more accurately, that s/he gives us rounded, fleshed out characters who are complicated and complex, rather than flat characters who can be described as "hero" or "villain" with no grey area in between*. And Carriger has just done just that with Lady Preshea Villentia, the Mourning Star (and extra points for always giving us fantastic character names!).

If you've read Carriger's "Finishing School" series, you will recognize Preshea as one of the "mean girls" of Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

[Please note that you absolutely do not have to read those four books in order to read and enjoy this novella. Some of the winks and nods to the reader may be lost on you, but you won't even notice as they fly by.]

Telling (at least half of) this story from Preshea's point of view gives us a chance to understand her and her meanness just a bit more. Carriger doesn't try to change or rescue Preshea; she simply gives us insight to a complicated character. As Poison or Protect takes places a couple of decades after the Finishing School series, there is plenty of time for Carriger to fill in Preshea's backstory.

I also found it rather remarkable that, for a universe built on the existence of the supernatural (as that's where the Parasol Protectorate books start), there are only two -- count' em, TWO -- supernatural characters in this book**. And only briefly at that. (You'll recognize them both.) While some of the other characters refer, briefly and generally, to werewolves and vampires, they are not the focus; and the book does not suffer for it. I don't think that's a feat easily attained.

And while we're on the subject, the "steampunkiness" of Carriger's universe is also not such a focus in this novella. A couple of dirigibles here and there, and that's about it. Very little gadgetry, yet we do not notice that it's missing. It was only after the fact that I came to these two realizations.

So without the supernatural and without the steampunk, what are we left with? Dammit, Gail Garriger, you got me to read a romance novel(la)!! And I may or may not have enjoyed it. I may never forgive you for that.

Speaking of romance, Carriger manages to write some very tasteful (though no less sexy and/or erotic) sex scenes. I think I saw the word "cock" maybe once. I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to sex (or sex scenes), but there was nothing crude or vulgar about these. I appreciated that.

Last but not least: writing in Scottish dialect. I don't think I'll ever tire of some of these characters and their "dinna's" and "ken's." It's just sprinkled in there, even in their thoughts, and never forced in a way that feels like "I'M SCOTTISH. HERE I AM SPEAKING SCOTTISH AND DOING SCOTTISH THINGS."

So go, read, enjoy. Whether or not you do it whilst drinking tea and wearing a corset is up to you.

*See also Marissa Meyers' Fairest (Lunar Chronicles #3.5), or even just the first few chapters of Game of Thrones. When the POV switches, we suddenly find ourselves not sure whose side we're supposed to be on.
**I should say three, I think. There is Formerly Connie.
***Y'know what,...there is something slightly left unfinished: (click to read whole review with spoiler).

View all my reviews

White Privilege in Two Paragraphs

There are yard signs around the city which say, "We Must Stop Killing Each Other."  There is one on my sister-in-law's block.  And she was grieving the fact that her nine-year-old daughter (our niece, Little Red) is now able to read, which means that she will have to explain to Little Red what that sign means and why it's posted and what is going on with the state of the world.  I said, "Well, it's true [that we must stop killing each other]" to my Unit, who then expressed her desire (similar to her sister's) to keep Little Red as young and innocent as she can be, before she has to realize what a horrible place the world is.

I see one of those signs "We Must Stop Killing Each Other" every day when I drive home from work, and it dawned on me that for other children, other nine- and ten-year-olds, "We Must Stop Killing Each Other" is an everyday reality.  Other, non-white children have to be told on a daily basis why their friends and families are being shot and killed.  Other, non-white children have to be taught things like "Hands Up; Don't Shoot" and to always comply with persons of authority because at any moment they could be unjustly harassed, assaulted, and/or killed.  That is their everyday reality.  And the fact that Little Red's parents have the luxury of deciding when to tell her about this reality -- this "other" reality -- is white privilege.  Plain.  Lucky.  Stupid. Privilege.