Department Of My Phone Dictation Transcriber Knows Me Too Well
Dateline: Sunday, circa 3:30p; out for a walk. Moiself discovers this delightful agricultural (in my mind) scene, takes a picture, and sends it to friend CC, with a caption. In the caption I mean to say “crop;” only when CC reacts do I see what my phone decides the translation should read.
my caption “Looks like a good crap this year. They are usually ready for picking by June, but with global warming, we may be harvesting in May.”
I explain the mix-up to CC. Her response: “I guessed that could have gone either way.”
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Department Of I Wish It Were Just A Coincidence…
…but, unfortunately, it’s a timely issue. Again. *Still.*
That coincidence would be my friend Suzanne Mathis McQueen’s sharing of an article on Tuesday, which she wrote in 2019 It’s our fertilized eggs they want, and which today she says might be retitled, Fair Warning; thus, she added a 2024-worthy addendum. Check out the article, and while you’re at it, you might want to check out SMM’s other writings and ventures. An “author ~ publisher ~ nature nerd ~ dragon tamer ~ womb wisdom educator ~ reproductive rights protector,” she is a person of many hats and talents.
Oh yeah, the coincidence: on Monday, apropos of too many news nudges, moiself had been thinking…*once again* [1] …about how attempting to control/legislate the ways a woman uses her reproductive parts is the most fundamental violation of human rights.
I was thinking about how this right for human beings to be in charge of their own bodies is of paramount importance, and that for all of humanity, a woman’s right to bodily autonomy should take precedence – even over a man’s right to do the same. [2] Why, you may ask rhetorically? Because yon uteri is where we all come from.
AI hasn’t completely taken over everything; [3] a pregnancy is still launched and nurtured inside a woman’s body. But, according to the forces of evil, [4] although a woman is somehow capable enough to conceive in the first place, how she handles that bundle o’ DNA…well, she’s just not competent or principled enough to do it without governmental guidance interference.
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Department Of A Timely Reminder For A Timeless Admonition
Timely as in what SCOTUS is considering this week (a case related to contraception), timeless in that the wisdom of Christopher Hitchens warns us even today, from his way-too-early grave, about the dangers of fanaticism encapsulated in one very misunderstood foe of a woman’s – of any person’s – physical (or spiritual) autonomy.
“MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. [5] She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”
(Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice )
If you have ever uttered a kind word/held a generous thought for MT – and why wouldn’t you, based on the Catholic Church’s very successful propaganda about her ? – you owe it to your intellect to read The Missionary Position…or just read the Cliff Note’s version in my post from three years ago ( The Lot I’m Not Accepting; Department Of Name Dropping And Saint Shaming ). Or watch this documentary: Hell’s Angel.
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Department Of Seriously, What Have I Done To Deserve This?
Here is the earwig which awakened moiself early last Saturday am: Cher’s number one hit from *fifty* years ago, the now cringe-worthy, non-PC song, Half-Breed.
Of all the things to reflect on at 3 am….
I remember assuming at the time the song was popular (~ 1973) that the song must have been written by a White man. [6] Even as the child I was, I didn’t think then, and don’t think today, that the song was “racist” and/or “bigoted ” – kneejerk epithets that would certainly be flung at it now. It wasn’t racist; it was just stupid. Like most “Indian” stories told from a White perspective, the song’s lyrics (and music) used clichés for how cliché’s typically are used for: to present a viewpoint that is simply and profoundly wrong.
The lyrics portray the lament of a young woman, the daughter of a White father and a Cherokee mother, who is rejected by both sides of her lineage. But the opening verse about that rejection is inaccurate.
“My father married a pure Cherokee/
My mother’s people were ashamed of me/
The Indians said that I was white by law/
The White Man always called me ‘Indian Squaw’….”
Many North American native peoples, particularly those of the Southeast and Southwest tribal nations, were/are matrilineal – that is, tracing their lineage on the mother’s side – as are the Cherokee. Thus, the tragic mulatto of the song, while she may have been subjected to White Man pejoratives, would have been accepted as a Cherokee, by the Cherokee.
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Department Of Calling Out People Who Are On Your Side
Comedian Patton Oswalt so profanely described, in one of his comedy specials (“Talking for Clapping”), getting in trouble for using “the wrong words.” Even way back X# of years ago (six, to be precise), he appears to be a kindred spirit with moiself in terms of being frustrated with progressives who not only kick themselves in the foot but also kick other so-called progressive’s feet, by focusing on the wrong things. Translation: Calling out people who are on your side – are you nuts?
“…And it’s really hard now because, look: I could not be a more committed, progressive, feminist, pro-gay, pro-transgender person, but I cannot keep up with the fucking glossary of correct terms, goddammit. I’m trying…I want to help but holy fuck, it’s like the secret club password, they change it every week, and then you’re in trouble: ‘That’s not that’s the word we use.’ ‘Fuck you – it was last week!’
Ru Paul – RU PAUL, got into shit for saying tranny. Ru fucking Paul!!! Ru Paul, she laid down on the barbed wire of discrimination throughout the seventies and eighties so this new generation could run across her back and yell at her for saying tranny? WTF?!?!”
“Don’t even think about siccing your word cops on Saint Ru.”
A bit later in his routine, Patton expands on a central point of his, which is that you should try to discern a person’s heart and intentions when they mess up on the vocabulary, because the thing is….
“…BTW, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, if you get hung up on words, then you’re going to let a lot of evil MFers slip through.
Because evil people learn the correct terms very quickly. They’re the first ones to learn it so they can smuggle their evil shit through, by saying everything correctly even though they’re hiding really bad shit in it.
And a lot of times, the good guys, eh, they fuck up a couple of words, but listen to their hearts.
All right: I’m gonna give you two guys right now. One of em’s is a good guy and one of em’s is a bad guy – I’m not gonna tell you which one….
Here’s guy #1: ‘While I happen to be heteronormative and certainly respect people who have alternative lifestyles including gay, bi, lesbian, omni or transsexual, I still think that heteronormative behavior is a biological imperative for propagating the species and I believe that does deserve the highest priority….’
Here’s guy #2: ”Well a couple of fags wanna get married or some dykes they wanna be men, how the fuck does that affect you, asshole?
Hey, if there’s some tranny out there it’s like, ‘Hey I don’t want a dick no more, I want a vagina,’ then boom, guess what – it’s a she now, or whatever the fuck, she, it – I don’t know, whatever they wanna call themselves, that’s it, it don’t affect you.
If you see some guy, I don’t care if he’s got a chooch that looks like a Boris Karloff horror movie, I don’t care, you gotta share the planet with that guy, or that girl, I don’t fucking know – they’ll tell me, right?’
The second guy was the good guy….who probably looks like an asshole, probably is wearing kinda rednecky shit. The first guy is probably at a nice coffee bar….”
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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [7]
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Parting Shot: I love it when/I hate it when…
I love it when something reminds me of a really bad/good pun sequence moiself hasn’t thought of in ages.
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May you try not to confuse crop with crap;
May you differentiate discernment and distraction; specifically: try to discern what someone says rather than be distracted by how they’re saying it;
May your early mornings not be haunted by Cher songs from the 70s;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] I hate hate, hate, hate, hate the fact that these thoughts can and will occurs to me at all, but given the political climate….
[2] Despite the fact that these rights are not in competition, no matter what the withered, Pope-sucking, Holy Joe windbags on SCOTUS may want you to think.
[3] Yeah, I know, the century is young….
[4] Read: The religious right, and extreme social and political conservatives of any religion or worldview.
[5] There is a BIG, big difference, and if y’all don’t already know about it, you should learn.
[6] Actually, a White songwriting couple, Mary Dean and Al Capps.
[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
