... And that's all there is to it, really. If, like myself, you will be seeing it in in a religious setting, make sure you drink enough caffeine-based stimulant of your choice in advance so as not to get bored senseless by the tragic attempt to link God and what is essentially the chance for THE ultimate piss-up.
Wow, that was snarky! Sorry, I don't know why the atheist in me reared up like that. Maybe because my sister just told me to pray as much as I can between now and half-eight because, due to the lunar eclipse, I will get ten thousand (or something) times the returns.
CAN I GET AN EYE-ROLL AND A CHORUS OF SNIGGERS?
Thank you. Even when I believed, that kind of thing made me think: 'Oh, good Lord. What is this, the human version of Super Mario Flash? If I hit that ? box more than once, I'll get four times the coins?'
I cannot wait to come out as an atheist and be all 'If God wants to make an appearance, BULLY FOR HIM. I am not going to subtly blame myself for chance ill-fortune through lamenting my 'kismet' (destiny) and then sit back and wring my hands when I CAN act, going 'God will tell me what to do.' God - the ultimate absent father. Let's not even GO THERE with religion...!' Anyone who agrees with me should also read this: http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2009/12/agreeing-with-god.html
Basically, my feelings about God are best summed up by Jesse Custer of the fucking amazing Preacher. If you haven't read it, read it. Run, screaming and howling, like a possessed loon to the nearest website/bookshop/geek store at the nearest opportunity and buy it. When I grow up and somehow accrue wealth, IT WILL BE BOUGHT. Go on, you know God would want you to. ;-)
The mad atheist rant ends here. Much love, don't get too pissed and if you need to have a nap before the clock strikes twelve - DO IT. I will be pretending to be both devout and awake. A plus!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Libertarians and dumb shit
I really should know better at my age (and educational state) than to be wading in to a debate that looks like it could be BLOG BEEF in the making, buuuuuuut...
On Pickled Politics this eve, after strenuous charades and serving of food/washing/loading of dishwashers for about 20 people or so, I sees this.
Now, I guess I have to comment because:
a) my boyfriend is a white libertarian and
b) he's demonstrated this kind of frankly depressing ignorance before.
Though I would like to hope that since that evening, he's going to think a little bit before he does it again. I keep reminding him of it every now and again so that he doesn't get complacent, and he fact-checks me. It's a great partnership. :-D
I don't actually mind libertarians at all. Barring the ones who are actually just selfish, semi-deranged conservatives who use 'libertarian' to mean 'extremely bigoted and misanthropic conservative-in-disguise' (or Randies, as one might term them, since these are also usually the kind of libertarian who thinks that 'not leaving poor people to die' is a crime against their god, the free market), libertarians are OK. I was about to say: hey, I married one.
Um, anyway. Charlotte Gore is OK. I'm not sure that my linking to her is really all that... necessary, but yeah, there you go. I don't really read her or anything, but she doesn't seem to be totally clueless. I mean, she seems to understand what 'racism' is (for anyone who was wondering, racism = prejudice + power) better than most other libertarians I've encountered online. Barring my bf who, let's be honest, is something of a miracle. I would elaborate, but I don't want to give away his identity wantonly.
However, as I've said to him, I often can't help agreeing that libertarianism is for rich, white people, or in the parlance of this country, white middle-class people. The problem is that so many of them argue from this cloud cuckoo land vision, where the world is all a beautiful place and nobody needs help to get anywhere. I know that they're not stupid per se, they're just ignorantly idealistic white liberals. If you are white and middle-class, you have had both racial privilege and class privilege handed to you throughout your life. Racial privilege, for me, is the bigger issue, because it's a lot harder to lose than is class privilege. You can 'downsize,' take a less high-flying job, or be 'an old Etonian on the median wage,' as Devil's Kitchen claims to be. However, if you're non-white, you can't dye your skin - or your family - white. I can pass for white occasionally, but I feel a strong affinity to parts of Indian culture that just isn't there for some parts of English culture. Give me the Mahabharat over the Bible any day.
Which is where my gripe comes in:
Firstly, as LeftOutside points out in this EXCELLENT post, DK totally misunderstood what Sunny was talking about when he said 'class war.' He also misunderstood the definition of 'class' being used.
Secondly: FAIL. As I mentioned above, you can change your economic classification (which is how I generally understand 'class' as well) but you can't dye yourself white! Not that that stops the skin-lightening industry!
This is where the cloud cuckoo land bit comes in:
(All quotes from here).
Um, excuse me, but I am a non-white female. As in, I am one of them who is often figured as the step above the Ultimate Imaginary Victim in bigots' mythology of racism - the one-legged black lesbian, with the implication that I, like she, doesn't exist and that if I do, it doesn't really matter.
Last time I checked - EVERY time I have checked - it was either right-wingers or self-proclaimed 'liberals' who practised racism (quick Q: is 'mild' or 'subtle' racism, as opposed to 'race hatred' OK then?) and the demonisation of religious difference (i.e. if it's non-Judaeo-Christian and it's making a fuss - BAN IT!). The practice of 'divide and rule' was also famously used in India (and Africa) by the British, and oddly enough, none of them were particularly left-wing by any stretch of the imagination. Just ask the Imperial War Graves Commission... What was it the British colonial authorities in Nigeria said when it was suggested that descendants of Africans killed in WWI might want proper graves when they were 'civilised enough to appreciate them' in 200-300 years' time by the then-head of the IWGC (apparently a liberal man for his time)? 'No.'
Misguided lefties in the SWP and Respect have been known to ally with Islamists in a desperate and moronic 'marriage of convenience,' it is true. Still, I would like DK to show me as many properly non-racist right-wingers or libertarians, as are among the regulars on PP, at least. When the debate about libertarians has reared its ugly head between my partner and I, even he struggles to name more 'positive' libertarians than himself and DK (and perchance, Gore?) and he is the only libertarian I've encountered who even remotely understands how much of a handicap - psychological as well as otherwise - not being white is.
I actually kinda like DK, even though I don't read him particularly, or necessarily agree with his views. I mean, it's about as white/male privilege as you can get to know that you can go and have a huge angry-child tantrum on your blog and have scores of white men come to make consoling, pacifying noises because, as with almost everything else, white men think and act like they are the powerful majority (as opposed to just one group of people) on the web (and in political blogging, they sure are). I was particularly impressed by his wife showing up on PP to upbraid Sunny for not using better language than him - nice one, Bella! Do you think you could have a word with the hubby too, though? Thanks.* But dumb shit is dumb shit, and really, there's little excuse when the Net is at your fingertips.
*(Side note: Oh my God, she reads I Blame The Patriarchy too! But she spouts Latin at random! I think I might sort of hate-love her).
Now my legs are aching fit to fall off, so I'm-a haul my freezing self under the covers and hopefully have a crying-free night of sleep. BYE, my pretties!
On Pickled Politics this eve, after strenuous charades and serving of food/washing/loading of dishwashers for about 20 people or so, I sees this.
Now, I guess I have to comment because:
a) my boyfriend is a white libertarian and
b) he's demonstrated this kind of frankly depressing ignorance before.
Though I would like to hope that since that evening, he's going to think a little bit before he does it again. I keep reminding him of it every now and again so that he doesn't get complacent, and he fact-checks me. It's a great partnership. :-D
I don't actually mind libertarians at all. Barring the ones who are actually just selfish, semi-deranged conservatives who use 'libertarian' to mean 'extremely bigoted and misanthropic conservative-in-disguise' (or Randies, as one might term them, since these are also usually the kind of libertarian who thinks that 'not leaving poor people to die' is a crime against their god, the free market), libertarians are OK. I was about to say: hey, I married one.
Um, anyway. Charlotte Gore is OK. I'm not sure that my linking to her is really all that... necessary, but yeah, there you go. I don't really read her or anything, but she doesn't seem to be totally clueless. I mean, she seems to understand what 'racism' is (for anyone who was wondering, racism = prejudice + power) better than most other libertarians I've encountered online. Barring my bf who, let's be honest, is something of a miracle. I would elaborate, but I don't want to give away his identity wantonly.
However, as I've said to him, I often can't help agreeing that libertarianism is for rich, white people, or in the parlance of this country, white middle-class people. The problem is that so many of them argue from this cloud cuckoo land vision, where the world is all a beautiful place and nobody needs help to get anywhere. I know that they're not stupid per se, they're just ignorantly idealistic white liberals. If you are white and middle-class, you have had both racial privilege and class privilege handed to you throughout your life. Racial privilege, for me, is the bigger issue, because it's a lot harder to lose than is class privilege. You can 'downsize,' take a less high-flying job, or be 'an old Etonian on the median wage,' as Devil's Kitchen claims to be. However, if you're non-white, you can't dye your skin - or your family - white. I can pass for white occasionally, but I feel a strong affinity to parts of Indian culture that just isn't there for some parts of English culture. Give me the Mahabharat over the Bible any day.
Which is where my gripe comes in:
OK. So, my class must be defined by my parents; Sunny's race is defined by his parents. I can no more help the income of my parents than Sunny can affect the race of his.
So, there is an equivalence: yes?
Firstly, as LeftOutside points out in this EXCELLENT post, DK totally misunderstood what Sunny was talking about when he said 'class war.' He also misunderstood the definition of 'class' being used.
Secondly: FAIL. As I mentioned above, you can change your economic classification (which is how I generally understand 'class' as well) but you can't dye yourself white! Not that that stops the skin-lightening industry!
This is where the cloud cuckoo land bit comes in:
Once again, we see how the Left prefers to label people by their differences—and why? So that human beings can be kept at each others' throats—through the generation of class envy, race hatred, religious differences. This is an old, old tactic which I call divide et impera—divide and rule—and I have written about it extensively.
It is better for people to be labelled, put into boxes and the differences between them emphasised—rather than uniting them in the realision that we are all human beings together—because that causes problems and tensions.
(All quotes from here).
Um, excuse me, but I am a non-white female. As in, I am one of them who is often figured as the step above the Ultimate Imaginary Victim in bigots' mythology of racism - the one-legged black lesbian, with the implication that I, like she, doesn't exist and that if I do, it doesn't really matter.
Last time I checked - EVERY time I have checked - it was either right-wingers or self-proclaimed 'liberals' who practised racism (quick Q: is 'mild' or 'subtle' racism, as opposed to 'race hatred' OK then?) and the demonisation of religious difference (i.e. if it's non-Judaeo-Christian and it's making a fuss - BAN IT!). The practice of 'divide and rule' was also famously used in India (and Africa) by the British, and oddly enough, none of them were particularly left-wing by any stretch of the imagination. Just ask the Imperial War Graves Commission... What was it the British colonial authorities in Nigeria said when it was suggested that descendants of Africans killed in WWI might want proper graves when they were 'civilised enough to appreciate them' in 200-300 years' time by the then-head of the IWGC (apparently a liberal man for his time)? 'No.'
Misguided lefties in the SWP and Respect have been known to ally with Islamists in a desperate and moronic 'marriage of convenience,' it is true. Still, I would like DK to show me as many properly non-racist right-wingers or libertarians, as are among the regulars on PP, at least. When the debate about libertarians has reared its ugly head between my partner and I, even he struggles to name more 'positive' libertarians than himself and DK (and perchance, Gore?) and he is the only libertarian I've encountered who even remotely understands how much of a handicap - psychological as well as otherwise - not being white is.
I actually kinda like DK, even though I don't read him particularly, or necessarily agree with his views. I mean, it's about as white/male privilege as you can get to know that you can go and have a huge angry-child tantrum on your blog and have scores of white men come to make consoling, pacifying noises because, as with almost everything else, white men think and act like they are the powerful majority (as opposed to just one group of people) on the web (and in political blogging, they sure are). I was particularly impressed by his wife showing up on PP to upbraid Sunny for not using better language than him - nice one, Bella! Do you think you could have a word with the hubby too, though? Thanks.* But dumb shit is dumb shit, and really, there's little excuse when the Net is at your fingertips.
*(Side note: Oh my God, she reads I Blame The Patriarchy too! But she spouts Latin at random! I think I might sort of hate-love her).
Now my legs are aching fit to fall off, so I'm-a haul my freezing self under the covers and hopefully have a crying-free night of sleep. BYE, my pretties!
Monday, December 28, 2009
Brink o' the new year post
Suuu, I am currently addicted to Super Mario Flash. It's really bad, I have only been hooked for the last 3 days or so, and I keep getting to Level 3 and dying. Level 3! Terrible.
It has been too long since I last posted. A nice, manageable level of crisis has prevented me from having anything of interest or importance to say.
For no apparent reason other than OMG, THE MARIO, MAKE IT STOP, here's a list of Old Year's/New Year's realisations/resolutions:
1. Do not put a rape alarm near a photo album and/or cookbook. You will live to regret it as the Godforsaken, cuckoo-put-through-a-woodchipper shriek threatens to wake your on-call, early-starting sister and generally break the minds of all those dear to you and within a mile radius. Including yourself.
RESOLUTION: For God's sake, tidy my room more so that rape alarms go where they should: away from anything that will ever be used, touched or moved in some way. Also, go to more feminist 'stuff' (i.e., events) so that hopefully, in some semi-utopian future, rape alarms are NO LONGER NEEDED! So what if women scare me (especially ones my age) and I am afraid of being the only non-white one?
2. I have no money, and subsequently no life.
Make the most of my sort-of job that I currently have. Also, get another job and go to the Careers service and tell them you have absolutely no life direction/marketable skills/blaggability and beg for miracle solution/new personality/suggestions. Also, TALK TO PEOPLE AROUND ME. I cannot be the only person out there who sucks at life.
3. I find it hard to talk to people and establish friendships, even when there seems to be common ground.
Enquire about people more; ask questions and don't think about things so much that talking comes a Sisyphean task.
4. Listen to more music. Also, watch more of the various TV shows I have amassed and waiting to go... I'm hoping to sink my teeth into True Blood soon (wah wah wahhhh).
5. I'm fat. Find local classes/ unexortionately-priced gym, join. LEARN TO SWIM AND RIDE BIKES!
6. My mind sometimes feels like it'll never be clear... blog more!!!
Right, I am too knackered to do more of that right now. Had a mass family get-together earlier... Indian/Punjabi snacks... warm glow of cousinly affection... three hours of charades... It's time to try to adhere to one more resolution:
7. I'm always tired and sometimes find it near-impossible to be motivated. Drugs are not the answer! Put down the tea-cup and step away from the chocolate! GET THEE TO BED ON TIME as is beneficial to the nature of an early riser, though I have only really been that by accident since I was about 15.
I want to wave my fist and shout angry, semi-coherent nonsense like some random hick out of My Name Is Earl or The Simpsons, but I think it will have to be in another post. Or tomorrow.
By the way, I love you all. You are probably not regular readers any more, but hey, you were once - and some of you will return (occasionally) - and I appreciate it!
It has been too long since I last posted. A nice, manageable level of crisis has prevented me from having anything of interest or importance to say.
For no apparent reason other than OMG, THE MARIO, MAKE IT STOP, here's a list of Old Year's/New Year's realisations/resolutions:
1. Do not put a rape alarm near a photo album and/or cookbook. You will live to regret it as the Godforsaken, cuckoo-put-through-a-woodchipper shriek threatens to wake your on-call, early-starting sister and generally break the minds of all those dear to you and within a mile radius. Including yourself.
RESOLUTION: For God's sake, tidy my room more so that rape alarms go where they should: away from anything that will ever be used, touched or moved in some way. Also, go to more feminist 'stuff' (i.e., events) so that hopefully, in some semi-utopian future, rape alarms are NO LONGER NEEDED! So what if women scare me (especially ones my age) and I am afraid of being the only non-white one?
2. I have no money, and subsequently no life.
Make the most of my sort-of job that I currently have. Also, get another job and go to the Careers service and tell them you have absolutely no life direction/marketable skills/blaggability and beg for miracle solution/new personality/suggestions. Also, TALK TO PEOPLE AROUND ME. I cannot be the only person out there who sucks at life.
3. I find it hard to talk to people and establish friendships, even when there seems to be common ground.
Enquire about people more; ask questions and don't think about things so much that talking comes a Sisyphean task.
4. Listen to more music. Also, watch more of the various TV shows I have amassed and waiting to go... I'm hoping to sink my teeth into True Blood soon (wah wah wahhhh).
5. I'm fat. Find local classes/ unexortionately-priced gym, join. LEARN TO SWIM AND RIDE BIKES!
6. My mind sometimes feels like it'll never be clear... blog more!!!
Right, I am too knackered to do more of that right now. Had a mass family get-together earlier... Indian/Punjabi snacks... warm glow of cousinly affection... three hours of charades... It's time to try to adhere to one more resolution:
7. I'm always tired and sometimes find it near-impossible to be motivated. Drugs are not the answer! Put down the tea-cup and step away from the chocolate! GET THEE TO BED ON TIME as is beneficial to the nature of an early riser, though I have only really been that by accident since I was about 15.
I want to wave my fist and shout angry, semi-coherent nonsense like some random hick out of My Name Is Earl or The Simpsons, but I think it will have to be in another post. Or tomorrow.
By the way, I love you all. You are probably not regular readers any more, but hey, you were once - and some of you will return (occasionally) - and I appreciate it!
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