Dealing with female social violence in daily life

May 20, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in the Big Picture

Edit: As was rightly pointed out to me by a typically cooler-headed friend, this woman may have just been trying to make a joke and had it come out really awkward. I’m still pissed – but she’s got a good point.

So my next door neighbor just attacked me, baby boomer female social violence style. I was out harvesting oregano. Her roommate/partner/don’t know came out, introduced herself, asked my name. “Oh, like Princess Diana.”

I fucking hate being compared to a princess. Princesses get traded for real estate. I do NOT get traded for real estate, under any circumstances.

“Or like Wonder Woman.” I smile and go back to work. Besides, most people get confused by the goddess reference.

The driver – the one I’ve seen more – pulls up beside me.1 “You better be careful because Princess Diana’s real name was Princess Diarrhea.”

Be careful of what, exactly? Is she threatening to call me Princess Diarrhea? What behavior have I exhibited to cause her to use such mean-spirited bullying on me out of nowhere? Getting rid of furniture in my house that didn’t belong to her?

This is, point for point, female social violence. By insulting me she was trying to establish herself as dominant. Because now I have reason to be afraid of her – and if I’m afraid of her, the typical reasoning follows that I’ll be more likely to cater to whatever demands she might make.

She has no idea the kind of crap people like her – or more skilled than her – have put me through.

All I said at the time was, “That’s unfortunate.” As my sweetie has rightly pointed out, confrontation might lead to escalation – especially if she’s narcissistic enough to make it all about winning and not about living peaceably.

It was a shit thing to say. There is no universe in which it would be considered harmless teasing. And now I know she’s absolutely NOT to be trusted.

 

 

 

 

  1. Last week she gave me a lecture about how the rabbits in the yard “need to live to,” as though I hadn’t said at all, “I’m just trying to plan my garden so I can co-exist with the bunnies.” It was patronizing and bordered on insulting, but I dismissed it as self-righteous pseudo-spirituality I’ve seen often enough to recognize as harmless. [↩]

What would you do with five pounds of green beans?

May 16, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in Cooking

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Like the US prepares for wars, Minnesotans prepare for the LAST winter. So Mike and I decided to really pack our freezer with the frozen foods, preparing to have something local even if we could not necessarily get it fresh. The end result of this is a very large bag of green beans and various proteins. Now that Mike’s off the ketogenic diet,  I’m having to readjust – but right now I am sneaking in one or two keto meals here and there on purpose. Why? Because while I think the demonization of carbohydrates – or of any food (not food product, but food/baked good/dairy item) is absolutely ridiculous, I also find that a break from the carbs here and there refreshes. While I don’t have a wheat allergy, my body doesn’t like too much starch in general.

It also gave me an interesting cooking challenge. I found that when I ate fully-fatted yogurt, butter, or whatever might have a full fat versus no fat option, I consumed less calories and felt more satisfied eating the fatty stuff.1

Which is good, since  I’ve got five pounds of green beans to try new things with. I suppose at some point I’ll fall back on the “when in doubt, puree,” approach. There’s only so much quiche and fritatta a woman can make.

What you see above is baked green beans with feta cheese. The top image is a lot of lemon juice with a dash of olive oil – I likely added too much lemon juice on that one.

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  1. I’m still very anti-diet because I’m very anti-cult thinking in general, but I do like to try new approaches. [↩]

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Myth of Writing #1: Love of Language

May 14, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in Writing
Ernest Hemingway in Milan, 1918

Ernest Hemingway in Milan, 1918 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More than one English professor has waxed on about Hemingway. His prose was tight, his story tragic, and his habits all of the masculine nature that heterosexual literate men seem to aspire to. When presented with my blunt observation that Hemingway, outside of literary laudation, bores the living shit out of me, I’m met with defensiveness and even hostility. But c’mon, if a date is anything like reading Hemingway… it’s a boring date where you walk away analyzing his insecurities for years.

This love of Hemingway seems to translate to a love of language. Words forming curls of image around specific ideas and descriptions. Just as all commercial perfumes smell of synthesized grapefruit and musk to me, all these laudable literary loves seem to tell the same story over and over, in the same way. I feel like language lovers are a secondary type of narcissist: they are so accustomed to the sounds of these homogeneous voices that they mistake the homogeneity for quality. Literary writing repeats sounds and rhythms. Like four chords of a pop song, the literary has its own pattern: write a catchy scenic intro, introduce a controversial subject and in the process reference personal upbringing whether or not there’s any reason to give a damn. If it involves disease, tragedy or violence, you’ve got yourself an award winner.

It bores me. As this is the year of doing what I like, and not what I should like, or told I’m should like, I’m putting it flat out: I get little to no pleasure out of “literary” fiction. Reading the stacks of highbrow material is just as stupid as carrying on with a sexual partner who just doesn’t care if I have an orgasm.

Genre fiction, on the other hand, may share the same plot across thousands of novels. It may use simple words. Nobody’s writing to show off in genre fiction, and because of that, I can actually show up at their page and have a good time. Read the rest of this entry »

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Cure a Traffic Jam, all by yourself

May 9, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in the Big Picture, Travel
Traffic congestion at Kosmodamianskaya embankm...

Traffic congestion at Kosmodamianskaya embankment in Moscow (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From my Delicious Links writeoffs: I’m going through various pieces of my Delicious bookmarks and using some as writing prompts. Also, I have thus relayed/boosted a signal that I wanted to in the first place.

OK, it actually does take some cooperation. But when you’re stuck in traffic hell, there is one thing you can do:

Slow down, and leave as much space as you can between you and the cars in front of you. Other cars will fail to get what you’re doing, and pull in front of you. All you can do is count to yourself, allow more room, and try again.

Why?

Because some motion is better than a standstill. You’ll get home faster in crawling traffic than in a bumper-to-bumper standstill.

I don’t drive as much as I used to – between telecommuting and mass transit I don’t experience traffic jams like I did. But on those occasions where I must be in rush hour traffic… it works. Rather than hurrying up to get to that inch between yourself and the next bumper, just slow down but don’t stop and maintain some room. It helps that moving is preferable to not moving – so just refusing to contribute to a standstill has value.

Note: this probably won’t work in Chicago.

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Big scandals and smallish communities: thoughts on the rescue of Berry, DeJesus and Knight

May 7, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in Journalism, Pagan Culture

There’s no way to adequately analyze the onscreen interview with hostage rescuer Charles Ramsey. In his television interview, he hit the social and class layers better than any news anchor could – and points to him for making the guy interviewing him uncomfortable. There’s no confrontation more necessary than that borne of total honesty.1

Then there’s the side twist: alleged (we have to say that until charges are pressed – let’s say someone else put those women in his basement without his knowledge) kidnapper Ariel Castro’s own son (aka Anthony Castro) wrote one of the first articles covering the disappearance of Giselle DeJesus. It’s unclear whether the younger Castro was living with his father at the time – if he lived with his mother or in dorms, a whole lot of stuff could have gone on without him knowing. Whether he likes it or not, the details of his own connection and his potential culpability will be examined by both the public and the law in the coming months and even years.

It’s going to be an issue that journalists, especially journalists in small communities, must pay attention to. It’s unclear whether the younger Castro is still a working journalist. If he is, he would have to be recused from covering anything related to this story because his position is conflict of interest – he is a potential source.

What becomes foggier is people of closer but not as direct relationships. Ramsey himself had a social relationship with the kidnapper – until he discovered the women hidden in the man’s basement.

This extreme example for Anthony Castro is a regular conundrum for Pagans reporting on Pagan-related news. While the Pagan umbrella is larger than we can visibly see (because of so many people that aren’t even out to other Pagans) we operate like it’s all a very small community. On a hopefully metaphorical level, we are the neighbor that reports the kidnapper or the kidnapper’s son whenever there’s something remotely controversial to report. For those of us that are out, we’re too small a community per geographic area and too close together to avoid this.

To not report something of that magnitude – to remain silent – is in itself unethical, more unethical than crossing the lines of disinterest and objectivity to make that news known. Abusive people count on silence; it’s why the bad people that get into Paganism seeking new victims are so fond of the misuse of “To be silent” from the commands of the Magi.

The smaller the community, the less the usual exclusions apply. What if the person in the younger Castro’s position were the only person available to report on the event? What if the person in Ramsey’s position were the only one available? What then? What if only one of the victims was available to report on what had been done? That could actually happen, especially in small communities. Then the question raised would be even more complex. Yes, it would clearly be a biased source – but the ethical duty of an activist press is to take power away from the person who committed the abuse in the first place. Giving a victim a voice, even a biased voice would be more ethical in that situation than remaining silent for the sake of objectivity. Of course, the abuser would not think so – but that’s how abusive people think.

There is no specific Pagan scandal I am thinking of or comparing as I write this. But this situation makes me think of several mini-scandals, over years, that have fit this pattern of strange connection. When there is no absolute right thing to do, then transparency is the closest of the mostly-right things to do.

Stories will come to Pagans – hopefully not of the kidnapping extreme – and the connections will be close. I hope that we are prepared for it when it comes.

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  1. Also, don’t assume the siren/momentary panic is him doing something illegal – having known people that lived in Kabrini Green in the 90s, police in certain neighborhoods are often alarmingly non-discriminatory about arresting every black man in sight when organizing a lineup. Even if it’s probable or the guy has a record, it may not be what you assume. [↩]

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More on productivity: Delicious links part 1

May 7, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in Productivity, the Big Picture
English: Logo for Delicious website. No longer...

English: Logo for Delicious website. No longer in use. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For those unfamiliar, Delicious pre-dated Digg as a social bookmarking system. Digg has since been replaced by Reddit, which socialized about the various links bookmarked and now is the first place to go for “what’s up.”  Delicious hovered in the background, never quite reaching the grand scale of Digg or Reddit – but still remained very useful and functional to those that knew about it and understood how its applications differed from other early social sharing out there. If you haven’t looked at it in a few years, take a new look – while some of it has been “tumblerized” it’s actually still a workable system for sharing links with a select few.delicious.com screen capture 2012-1-1-14-22-31

The original Delicious became excellent for long term use in the following ways:

  • Before ReadItLater and InstaPaper, it was useful for marking those things you wanted to read later. I do consider the new plugins superior, so in this sense it is now obsolete.
  • It became a fast, efficient, non-email way to share links with specific people. Mike and I still use it as a shopping tool when we’re researching purchases online, because we can bookmark specific dressers, container bins, etc. to facilitate discussion. It is still highly applicable in shared research for this. Pinterest of course has since made that somewhat obsolete. However, for information that isn’t image driven, it still applies.
  • Delicious became my de facto recipe file and remains so. Since I read a lot of vegan/vegetarian blogs (despite not being one) it became an efficient way for me to collect recipes into one easy-to-check and search location.  For specific, topical interests on specific pages, it was preferable to using bookmarks in my browser.

It seems, however, that rather than looking for fixing what was broken, the new owners  just broke all of it and started  over. To me this is more evidence that computer programmers tend to think all computer problems can be fixed through programming alone. I live with one, and I have had a front row seat to that mentality. Google especially has that problem.

I’m of the opinion that many problems that happen in these tech things, however, would be better solved if programmers worked in concert with marketers/end users. This would, of course, require marketers that are also not overly locked into a certain way of thinking about, well, everything. It would have to be someone who is less concerned with sales and recognition and more concerned with pairing the right user with the right end product. This would require a goal-free approach to marketing that would make capitalism as we know it implode.

My complaints about the new delicious are many, but my hope is that most will be resolved, or where I can at least ignore the features I don’t like.

  • First, there’s this school of thought that tags are everything. They’re not. Tags are best used as quick labels; the detailed tags that Delicious programmers seem to expect are time-consuming, especially when you just want to quick save something for future reference. We don’t have all day to catalog or interests, especially since delicious is a tool intended to manage the constant high volume information coming at us these days. When Delicious users asked for an improvement to tags, I believe most wanted to be able to delete them, especially since the comma/no comma tagging system caught many of us off guard, and now we all have trailers of tags marked “subjecttag,” rather than “subjecttag” or “subject tag” etc. Expecting LOTS of tags negates the point of them as a quick-efficiency organizing system.
  • Second, the search feature is now from Pluto. Actually, it’s from planet Eris. Sometimes your own links might come back to you, other times they won’t.
  • Third, the “stacks” system is the exact OPPOSITE of organization. It literally creates a “stack” you have to dig through for your desired link – making delicious the equivalent of writing links down on index cards and piling them on the floor. The entire point of digitization is to get away from that.
  • Lastly, it appears that Delicious is trying to emulate Pinterest and/or Tumblr. Let Pinterest be Pinterest, let Facebook be Facebook. The point of social systems online is to give them a function unique from the other social sites and tools available. In the case of Delicious, it’s exactly halfway between social networking and productivity, which is exactly where it belongs.

 

I’m still hopeful that the Delicious programmers are on it, and not so mesmerized by the dogma of web 2.0 that they’ll make it better instead of worse.

NOTE: this was drafted in January of 2012. As of 2013, Delicious is still around – and I have seen no significant changes. You still can’t change your username, you still have to use the stacks system and searching is still user unfriendly because it’s trying to force external social networking instead of allowing users to choose their internal systems – something that the site is much more useful at offering.

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Thank you Glee, for spelling it out–Glee on marriage [Spoilers, for the picky]

May 3, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in Divorcing a Real Witch

Mock Glee all you want – it’s all over the place, has crazy plot holes

English: Darren Criss at the film premiere of ...

English: Darren Criss at the film premiere of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows in Alice Tully Center, New York City in November 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

, veers directly into the offensive and sometimes matches the plot with the music so badly that it makes you want to tear your eyeballs out. At the same time, the show has a gift for saying all the things we were afraid to say twenty years ago. If you accept that the show is not about high school now but about what the showmaker wished high school was like in the 1990s it makes more sense; these bon mots are all things those of us from that era wish someone came up with back then. Sorry current generation, we really can’t give you wisdom because even when us older folks have the same experiences, we experience them in totally different ways. I suspect – but can not experience so do not know for sure – that this is especially true for gay and non-gendered kids.

 

The show is known for acting as a voice for the gay experience; there’s been some pretty bracing stuff in there about homophobia, bullying, the way some protect themselves by becoming the bullies to avoid bullying. It also has some sweet moments that are only just now starting to appear in American canonical/TV trop storytelling: same sex first love stories, coming of age for gay teenagers, the non-relationship betwen gender identity and sexual orientation.

Also, marriage.

HERE BE THE SPOILER! I’ve changed the font to white to make this easier on delicate eyes.

Last night, Blaine worked up his nerve to ask for Kurt’s hand in marriage. Mr. Hummel shot him down on the spot, asking him point-blank if he was crazy. Why? For the same reason he didn’t really support Finn and Rachel’s prospective marriage: they are teenagers. This may be a poor paraphrase, but he got it out quite explicitly: “It’s marriage. It’s sacred. That’s why divorce hurts so much more than just a breakup. There’s so much more to it.” He didn’t say he was averse to having Blaine as a son-in-law, he just didn’t want him as a teenage son-in-law. Since Blaine and Kurt were also broken up at the time, there may have been some additional protect-Kurt logic to Papa Hummel’s logic.

Somewhere in between weirdness and occasionally awful choreography, Glee has a way of saying what needs to be said. Notably those moments are the ones without the dance numbers.

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Video: The Truth about Dishonesty

May 3, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in Insights


Where rationalization comes from, and how it happens. It’s all about depersonalization – and you do it. Yes you.

#mypagantheology–condensed soup version

May 1, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in Pagan Culture
NYC - MoMA: Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans

NYC – MoMA: Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (Photo credit: wallyg)

Teo Bishop has started a project to crowdsource Pagan theology. Along with asking people to tweet it or comment about it on the Wild Hunt, he has asked those of us who blog to create posts also explaining our own theology.

So here goes my interpretation:

The way I see it, Pagan itself is NOT a theology. It is an expansive category term for a whole BUNCH of theologies. Those who identify as “generically Pagan” rather than as Wiccan, Druid, Hellenic, etc. have, from what I have gathered, a sort of universalist God/Godess view. That was popular in the 1990s with more explicit gravitation towards defined traditions with defined theologies happening at the turn of the 21st century.

I am American Eclectic Wiccan. I am also Gnostic.

So … we’re all right, and wrong, and won’t know until we die, and can talk to God about not knowing God right now. Also, there are lots of them. And God is also female … and male… and genderless… fat and thin, ugly and pretty, gay,straight, bi, asexual, in me, in you, in the closet, under our beds… all of it.

The popular word for that conception among Wiccans is “immanent.” For those of us who pray, it’s praying forward rather than up or down.

There is no way I can condense the whole of any theology, let alone a specifically non-dogmatic theology into a single blog post. So the best I can do is give a series of sentences that exist on my internal theological map.

  • There is no separation between God and nature. God IS nature.
  • God is male and female.
  • Women have the same inherent holiness, divinity1, intelligence, capacity for evil and capacity for good as men.
  • Gender is a social construct and participation is voluntary. There is no “naturally, as men” or “naturally, as women.”
  • There are also multiple beings called gods, that are part of the universe. The following are theories about them, not conclusions:
  • That these are beings that were once human that ascended to godhood
  • That they have always been gods, beings separate from humanity
  • That they are manifestations of the immanent divinity, not really separate but separated for the sake of humanity’s ability to perceive
  • That they are unique, separate entities and have really been around since the dawn of our known time; all that immanence stuff is to make ourselves feel better
  • Holy books may have wisdom, but also have a lot of manipulations and outright lies in them. Just as we view books written by our own with critical thought and skepticism, we also view books from other faiths with the same critical thought and skepticism.
  • The discoveries of science takes precedence over religious beliefs.
  • There is life after death. Details are undetermined. Some like the idea of Summerlands, but for those of us that don’t subscribe to the Celtic mythos, this is still up on the air.
  • Reincarnation happens. Details – animal or human, plant or mineral, are also undetermined.
  • There is energy inherent in all things – even the synthesized material we use came from nature.
  • Animism is acceptable, especially from an immanent deity perspective.
  • Faith may well be a neurological truth, much like sexual orientation.
  • Other religions exist for a reason, and speak to people that need them. As long as the religion makes someone’s life better, it is worth supporting that person in his/her own faith.
  • Religion is not a competition – those who try to win by converting to their faiths are sinning against themselves. Attempts at conversion are immoral.
  • “Harm” is used in place of sin. It is defined as doing active damage to others. “Sin” focuses on sex; non-harmful (100% consensual legal/of age) sex is sacred with our without marriage in Wicca.
  • Practice of magic and divination is not required but is acceptable. It is viewed as a natural adjunct to taking responsibility for the life you have been given (your own.)

    • Of course it’s all much more complicated than that – and that’s just what lives in my own head and heart. But as a starter list, it’s a place to work from.

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    1. this is not the same as holy [↩]

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    Productivity – Gmail forwarding

    April 30, 2013 by di | No Comments | Filed in Technology

    You may wonder why this blog is focusing on what might seem as aspiritual as productivity and using technology to make life easier, when I could write about going outside and finding the divine. Here’s why: these productivity efforts are how I make the time to do that stuff.

    "diana rajchel" magickalrealism "twin cities"

    Sometimes, it seems like sticking with Outlook would have been a good idea. The calendar was there, so were the contacts, and hell, after awhile it even added a task list. I used to use them all. Then I tried Eudora, went back to Outlook and now on to Google mail.1  These days, Google has essentially all the same goodies as Outlook – with an added plugin or three, of course.

    mai_shotl

    In years past, I spread my life out over 3 email accounts. While at the time it didn’t seem like much hassle, I’ve realized I spent entirely too much time hitting alt + tab to jump between accounts. Not to mention frequent rechecking throughout the day. Since I want to work more efficiently – i.e. less – creating a system that brings all my email accounts down to one sounded great.

    Even better, there are ways to do it that don’t force you to tell everyone you’ve changed your email yet again.

    I made this happen by following this path:

    On the top right of your gmail account, click the cog. From there, click

    Settings>Forwarding and POP IMAP.

    Click Forward to and enter the primary email address you want to receive messages at. Lather, rinse, repeat for all other Gmail addresses. I use this for my old Magickal Realism account, my personal email account and even for my PNC2 email so I don’t miss messages.

    The system does have its flaws. First, my core calendar is at the account I am NOT using primarily for email. Also, my Smartphone is set to the account where I’m moving the email from. Also, I’m pretty sure I can’t move my Google Plus account from where Google decided I’m allowed to have it, and since a)I actually use Google Plus and b)I’ve got a growing following that is headed towards parity with my Twitter following, moving it seems like a bad idea. That same account is also where I keep my annual mission documents (that I’m apparently supposed to read daily.)

    This means, hopefully, less stuff missed when I’m writing for Fat Chic, and ideally more time while promoting Divorcing a Real Witch. It also gives me a chance to go outside once in awhile!

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    1. I ignore the end results of Yahoo, having only used it as a sort of junk filtration system. Sometimes there is no graceful way to decline signing up for a mailing list. [↩]
    2. Pagan Newswire Collective [↩]

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