…let’s talk about Glitter.

As you may have heard, it was Sweetney’s birthday on Monday. We celebrated a couple days early with dinner at Golden West, followed by video games and Glitter at Rock Candy (Baltimore’s only candy-store-slash-movie-theater… /plug).

Glitter is amazing. Before you have me carted off to the asylum where I quite obviously belong for other reasons, let me clarify that I mean it is amazing in its all-encompassing awfulness. Overwrought (and confusing) opening, tragic mulatto myth right out of the gate, comically atrocious music, Da Brat dancing, utterly baffling screen wipes, this-movie-is-about-New-York anvils falling all over the place, unscary villains with only slightly believable motives, codependent enmeshment presented as twoo wuv, an abrupt and out-of-nowhere ending, and the Mary Sue-iest main character ever, though really, who expected anything else from Mariah.

You really kind of have to see this. But only under very specific conditions. Do not under any circumstances watch this alone. You’ll die of shame. Here’s how it has to go down. You’re going to need five or so really sarcastic motherfuckers, about a case of beer, and some wine. (Now, you don’t have to do that part exactly like we did - we recruited a boy to get our alcohol, and he got all fancy with it. You can follow the Sweetney method: get once snooty bottle of wine and one six-pack of snooty beer. All of your other wine and beer should be of the 7-11 variety. Make sure you start with the snooty shit. Once you’ve completed one round of that, move on to the corner store booze.)

However you decide to handle the alcohol, you should allow no more than ten minutes between rounds. You do not want to let the intoxication subside while the movie is still playing. (In fact, we suggest you warm up with a round of drinks and a round of Rock Band, just to get the blood and the shit-talking flowing.) Then grab another, start the movie, and make it known that talking over it and talking back to it is not only allowed, it is mandatory. You’re aiming for MST3K, here.

Loose tongues are encouraged - don’t hold back! Drink and snark with reckless abandon! Just please make sure you’ve lined up chauffeurs for the ride home, or Brooke Hogan will be misspelling her defense of you all over the internet. No one wants that.

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I have these days when I feel very sensitive around class issues.  I mean, there are really NO days when I’m not sensitive around class issues, but every so often I hit a patch where, for whatever reason, I have a hair trigger.

This is one of those patches.  I’m behind on every single one of my bills, I’ve taken an extra job, my checking account is overdrawn, I had to skip lunch today due to that last item, and I’m wrestling with all the fears and anxiety and anger and sadness that this stuff would bring up for anyone, plus the visceral, raw, disproportionate terror and guilt I’m still carrying around from the years I spent absorbing my dad’s visceral, raw, disproportionate terror and guilt about raising kids with not enough money or resources.

Cognitively, I understand that I’m one half of a kickass parenting duo, raising one very kickass kid.  And cognitively, I understand that what she needs is to be loved and believed in, and that as long as we don’t transfer our panic on to her the way it was transferred on to me, she’s going to be just fine.  Cognitively, I understand that millions of kids all over the world grow up with a hell of a lot less money, resources, and opportunities than my kid has or I had.  Cognitively, I understand that come what may, we’re going to be fine, because we always have been.  My mom raised me to believe that I could figure shit out as it came, and I do.

But I wake up in the middle of the night trying to find air sometimes, and I look around our house and see the clutter of a family that works a lot more hours than we’d like to and the wear and tear on a house we can’t afford to repair right now - technically speaking we can’t actually afford to live in it.   I wake up some mornings and literally cannot see out of my left eye, the pain in my head is so intense from having ground my teeth all night.  And sometimes I feel my cheeks burning with completely misplaced shame about having had the audacity to bring another person into all of this, even though I KNOW that the people who want mamas like me to feel bad about ourselves are the ones who are fucked up, and that I can be a good mom even during the weeks when we know a check is definitely going to bounce before payday.

There are days and weeks and months when the panic overrides the cognition entirely.

And I’m ready to unload it all on the next person who says something fucked up, I really am.

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Some of the stuff I’ve read online about the Duggars is making me uncomfortable. I’m not about to go out and have 18 kids for The Lord or whatever, and I certainly think there’s tons of objectionable shit to be found in the quiverfull (shudder) movement, but the way that some people are talking about this story is pretty unsettling.

I think we can be disturbed about the mainstream media weirdly making heroes out of Michelle Duggar and her creepy husband, and we can definitely be disturbed about this movement and its aim of breeding an army for God (and the overwhelming patriarchalness of it all), without being gross about Michelle Duggar herself. Comments about the condition of her vagina are way over the line (and probably not all that accurate either - anatomy lessons: get you some). And really, comments about whether she personally should have so many children are approaching that line, as far as I’m concerned.

But what really prompted this post was a comment over at Jezebel that almost sounded like it was in agreement with what I’m saying here (”Ah yes. Because pro-choice only applies to choosing NOT to have kids, and not to a family that chooses to have as many as they can?”), but then veered off in awholenother direction with, “Keep in mind these people are debt free and do not (to my knowledge) draw government support.”

Debt free? Is that what makes it okay for this woman to have as many children as she wants? If the family were in debt, would pro-choice then not apply to them? What about “government support?” Should parents receiving what still exists of welfare have to check in with the rest of the country’s taxpayers if they become pregnant, or maybe before they have sex? I find this line of reasoning incredibly creepy - creepier even than the juvenile cracks about Michelle Duggar’s allegedly stretched-out birth canal or her allegedly soon-to-fall-out uterus. Because really, who cares if some nitwit on the internet thinks a stranger’s vagina has lost its elasticity. That’s definitely gross, but I’m really skeeved by how widely it’s accepted that birthing is your own business so long as you don’t receive any part of that big less than one percent of one tax dollar. Economic and social policies are determined by this kind of thinking, and it’s scary.

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Now that my bosses know, I can say this here: after many years of trekking up and down the eastern seaboard every damn day, I am looking for a job in Baltimore.  (Pause for laughter over the phrase “job in Baltimore.”)  I’ve decided that the benefits of working in DC just do not any longer outweigh the costs to me and my family of my being gone 12 hours a day, five days a week, far enough away that I can’t get home quickly if I need to, in a city that I have never, ever liked.

I’ve already started fantasizing about dinners I’m going to cook and books I’m going to read in the reading area I’m going to rearrange my bedroom to create and all the early-evening drinking of wine I have planned for my back yard this summer.  I’ll be able to watch the sunset!

Of course, I’ll also need to work for pay so I can keep my bedroom and my back yard and have food to cook for dinner, and so I’ve been thinking about what kind of job I want (I’d really like to get this part right).  I’ve been working for several years in kind of the dream work situation, so it’s hard not to be overly choosy for the market I’m searching in.  I mean, I want a 6.5 hour workday, fully-paid-for health insurance, unlimited sick leave, and 17 vacation days a year.  And a salary that leaves room for my partner to keep running our candy store.  All of which is actually what I’m leaving behind in DC, no exaggerations whatsoever.

I know how completely and totally batshit insane that probably sounds.  When I look at that on paper (er, on screen), I get a little woozy.  I lusted after this job.  I pined away for it.  I called the HR director every 30 seconds for weeks.  I love it.

But it’s not in Baltimore.  My kid is in Baltimore, my partner is in Baltimore, my house, my store, my life… these things are all in Baltimore.  And from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., every night for YEARS, I have not been in Baltimore.  I miss all of it every minute.  That has never dissipated even slightly.  And so this feels like a homecoming.  I’m excited.  Scared shitless, but excited.

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Seriously, my brand loyalty to Google is disturbing.  But if I’m going to be brand loyal to anything, shouldn’t it be a company that apparently bugged my house and tapped my phone to hear what I want?  Because I swear, the moment I said, “I wish you could share items on Google Reader with notes attached,” there it was!  “Share with notes!”  Right there in my Google Reader!  And, as a matter of fact, I was just thinking that it’d be nice to leave things unread during those moments that I’m feeling to attention deficient to really read the stuff in my reader, and now “keep unread” is an option too.  I didn’t even make that wish out loud!  Oh, Google.  You really do love me.

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Mandating. If you want an abortion in Oklahoma, you have to have an ultrasound. And? That ultrasound has to be whichever kind of ultrasound - abdominal or vaginal - will provide the clearest image of the contents of your uterus. Neither the patient nor the doctor gets to decide which kind of ultrasound will be used, the patient cannot refuse, and there is no exception for rape or incest.

Let me run that past you again. Neither the patient nor the doctor can decide which kind of ultrasound to use. That means that if a vaginal ultrasound - that being the kind of ultrasound where you are penetrated vaginally with an object - is the kind that will provide the clearest image (and it is for almost all first trimester pregnancies), you have to have it if you want an abortion.

Go ahead and mull that over for a second and let me know what word comes to mind, and then see if you can explain why a state legislature would mandate that some women must become violent crime victims in their doctors’ offices.  And while you’re at it, see if you can figure out what kind of people elect legislators who would do such a vile, disgusting thing to women.  Let me know what you come up with on that last one, because I am surely at a loss.

source

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… inspired by bell hooks, and enraged by some shit that had been going on in an online feminist community, I wrote something in my then-LJ about feminism and privilege. I looked back through those archives to try to find it today because I’m again acutely disgusted by the online behavior of my fellow white feminists, and because I think I’m not just acutely disgusted this time. I think I’m profoundly and chronically tired. And I’m trying to find any reason to keep calling myself by this name that has always meant so much to me and been such a part of my identity, but I’m wondering if I can call myself “feminist” anymore when the feminism I see all around me is something that is so hurtful and hateful to women of color. A movement full of white women who would, based on what I’ve seen them do to women like BFP and blackamazon and so many others, exclude and dismiss my own daughter. A movement that apparently STILL thinks it’s alright to slander men of color. Like my daughter’s father, my partner.

What does this mean for my daughter? Will she be able to call herself a feminist? Will that be a comfortable label for her? Is she welcome? Because you know, a name she wouldn’t feel comfortable or welcome to take as her own isn’t one I feel like I can wear comfortably either.

Behind the cut is what I wrote in April of 2006. Today I see the situation as even more untenable. In May of 2008, I have some more soul-searching to do.

Read more…

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I like that you can collect money without paying a fee. That is the jam. H/T to Karnythia on LJ and The Rotund. (Both of whose blogs you should be reading, readers.) (Karnythia’s also a regular at The Angry Black Woman. You should be reading that, too.)

Click the button!  You know you want to!  Click it!

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And Kelly.  Because long after most of the din died down about Peggy “South Central Starbucks” Seltzer died down, I stayed as fascinated/horrified/appalled/disgusted/obsessed with her ridiculous ass as I was the day her sister ratted her out.  So you can only imagine how schadenfreudetastic this made me feel today - today when I am home recovering from some kind of incredibly nasty flu-cum-migraine and could really use the kind of incredulous, outraged laughter that only this particular brand of unbelievably STUPID jackass can provide.  Please, read the whole article, and please, please, please watch the video, and then revisit the question of how anyone in his or her right goddamn mind (hi, Inga, looking at you) could believe this hilarious bullshit.

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(Picture nabbed from a Google image search - hat tip to whoever took it!)

This is truly the best place I’ve ever lived. I feel really loved here and really part of a community and really like I have actual neighbors and stuff. I think I’m going to blog more about Lauraville (and about Baltimore, generally) - with photos! - in the coming weeks.

Where do you live, tiny readership? Is it awesome?

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