Paper Fruit

Today I received an incredibly bigoted email from a family member. It contained a re-hash of the whole Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed controversy that happened in 2005, and an incredibly racist, inappropriate email (warning: do not read if you are both easily offended and even mildly not-racist toward Muslims) that a professor named Indrek Wichman composed in response to a Muslim student protest at his university. The group had apparently committed sinister terrorist acts such as serving cocoa at a meetup and claiming that the cartoons constituted hate speech. Professor Wichman’s electronic letter contains many classy sentiments toward Muslims that you can read in the article, but the worst part is that this man is being used now as part of a whole crusade (yes, I am using that word intentionally) against so-called “political correctness,” an irritating bit of neo-con terminology that should have, along with endearing terms like “feminazi,” fallen out of common usage with the close of the 90s.

This should stir up an overwhelming “wtf?!” in the minds of all rational people. Apparently, according to the email sent to me this morning we are “in a war” and “this political correctness crap is killing us.” Excuse me? Apparently in the minds of my family-members and I assume whatever batshit-crazy conservative penned the original email “not being an asshole” and “having the decency and intelligence to not paint an entire group as being identical to their most vicious, vocal minority” is akin to “political correctness.” Whatever “political correctness” is. So OK.

I wrote a response regarding the wisdom of using this delightful piece of bile as a rallying point for anti-Muslim sentiment and how the ethics behind championing this man as some sort of hero are spurious at best. It’s long. I think it’s good. It’s sitting in my drafts box on my Hotmail account.

Why? Because I am a coward. 

I am afraid of controversy. It’s the same part of my personality that makes me shy away from confrontations about veganism, politics, animal rights, etc. I hate “stirring the pot” as my mother would say, especially with close friends and family members. I can only recall one instance where I did so, and I kind of regret it even though it ended up being pretty OK.

Usually I justify my cowardice by saying “I’m being diplomatic” or repeating to myself that “It’s not worth it, you won’t change anyone’s mind.” But I can’t help but question that. I am a person who (at least this summer) goes into a classroom every damn day and tells people stuff they don’t like to hear. To wit: I used the words “penetrator” and “penetrated” several times in class much to my students’ evident dismay. So why am I afraid to stand up to my family (and, if I was truly daring, the entire email forward list)?

I don’t usually think of myself as someone who is afraid to speak her mind. But I guess I am. Maybe it’s the family thing– I have a vexed relationship with my family in that we differ wildly in our perception of the world, and typically we just agree to disagree. This leads more often than not to great silences on both our parts, but it works. Years ago I asked to be taken off the list for conservative email forwards and they’ve been pretty respectful of that. But this, today, was kind of a violation of that agreement– and I’m not sure what to do. Fire a warning shot over their bow by requesting again to not be sent crappy emails? Ignore it? Declare open warfare by sending my response?

I think my family would find it inappropriate of me if I were to respond to the entire listserve with my thoughts. I don’t think they would read my response if I sent it just to them. Or, if they did, it would just piss them off. 

Argh. This is dumb. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m leaning toward just reiterating that I do not wish to receive such emails from them in the future. It seems easiest. But I’m not sure if it’s the most honest way of handling the situation. 

For anyone curious about reading my response to the championing of Professor Bigot as a spokesperson for “values” in the “war against political correctness it’s behind the cut:

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Right? Just, you know, celebrating the cultural quirks and linguistic nuances of racial minorities by using their unique heritage to create a distinctive cast of characters? 

The Princess and The Frog

There are times when I am just like wtf? about the world. Right now I need to be studying and writing papers and writing my final exam for my students and instead I feel like a sack of ass and want to do nothing but drink ginger tea and read crappy, crappy novels. Argh!!

In other news, I will have something (moderately) exciting to announce to the world in a few days. No, I’m not pregnant.

Felicitations! May your 2,762 birthday be as glorious as your first!

The good people at Apostrophe Abuse simultaneously amuse me and make me want to pull an Oedipus in order to never see such atrocities against punctuation and spelling ever again. Here, then, is a good Guide to Using the Apostrophe that I would link into the text of my blog but it is coming up all funny because it’s big. See what I did there? I used an apostrophe to join a subject to its verb.

I have long resolved to post about my favorite blogs around the internet, but I had to post this today ahead of the rest: You Can’t Please Everyone is a feature on a blog where the author collects and posts one-star Amazon reviews of classic movies, literature, and music. Some of them are absolutely amazing, others are just sad. Perhaps my favorite is the following, regarding Joseph Heller’s Catch-22:

“There are many myths that persist in modern life. One myth is that war is “meaningless”, “useless” or “insane.” Another myth is that Catch-22 is a good book.”

Another, vaguely prophetic and threatening review of the same:

“If Harry Potter is, as people claim it to be, one of the best books of all time, then this is its antithesis. Gather round muggles and read this review, or else the person that you’ve been dating will leave you for that professional football player and your parents and/or children will disown you and you’ll be forced to live in the basement with that balding, 43 year old starwars geek.”

Wait, what? I mean, I’m not a fan of Catch-22 (yes, I know, but not for any kind of weirdly conservative reason, I’m just a low person), but seriously? What is this person even talking about? Even so, it’s one of the more intelligent specimens. Most fall into the depressing category, such as this amazing review of 1984:

“i give this book one star i had to read it for class and i know it’s suposed to be a “classic” but god itis awful. first of all its NOTHING like the future is probly going to turn out. second of all every one says the aurthor george orwell is so trippy and wierd but i think he’s just trying to cover up for the fact that HE CAN’T WRITE. please george do us all a faver and stop writing books.” (emphasis mine)

Enjoy! But if you’re going to cruise Amazon.com you would better spend your time checking out The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart which is up for pre-order. Buy it!

Raechel is 26 today! Woo! 26 virtual spanks and one for good luck!

i am so vegan that i google "vegan cake" to post a cake for my vegan friend's birthday

I am basically running on empty right now, so the tears in my eyes might be my utter emotional exhaustion, but oh my goodness how wonderful does the Where the Wild Things Are movie look? It seems I have not learned from the Narnia movies, the Golden Compass movie, or any of the other vast, intense literary loves of mine that have been chewed up and destroyed by Hollywood, because I am holding onto some hope for this. Maybe it will get to be in the column of Series of Unfortunate Events and Holes in terms of quality adaptations, rather than the, uh, Prince Caspian column. 

Trailer!

I’ve been up here at All Saints for three and a half hours studying for my Greek test next week and I think my brain has turned into jelly and is oozing out through my ears, but in another half an hour I get to go have a drink at Fermentation Lounge with my friend Selena and the rest of my band of scallawags.

Then tonight I’m going to watch the Sense and Sensibility miniseries with John, which should be cool, except that my use of the term scallawag just there has given me a real urge to break out the Mount Gay and watch Pirates of the Caribbean. Hmm. Perhaps I should bank on the already-insane popularity of the not-yet-published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and write Sense and Sensibility and Pirates, so future generations can combine the pleasure of Regency romance and swashbuckling.

Holy crap, nobody steal my stolen idea, OK? That actually sounds awesome. Yarr!

A few days ago I was in a place of rage regarding my veganism, but I’m much more serene about being a vegan who wants to live in the world as a normal person. I’ve realized what was making me so wrathful was the place I’ve put myself in over the years around non-vegans worrying that if I was honest around them they would stop liking me. Maybe that’s the case but I don’t really care anymore. I realize now that for my own peace of mind I need to work on asserting myself more regarding my ethical stance when it comes to my boundaries, and so I’m going to try to do that. And if that loses me some friends so be it because this is who I am.

For example, I have two meat-eating friends that I hang out with pretty regularly at either my house or my friend Raechel’s house. Raechel is also vegan and while she allows non-vegan food in her house she requests that her cookware remain vegan, which is obviously completely reasonable because it is hers. One of these two friends, having some dietary restrictions of his own, is sympathetic to her rule of vegan cookware and my rule of no non-vegan stuff in my house. The other is pretty disrespectful of our choices, lifestyle, ethics, and rules. I say “pretty” and not “entirely” because while he will abide by the rules, he makes a fucking scene about it every time. I tolerate this because he is a very lovable person otherwise, but when I invited him to my house a few weeks ago I asked a friend to remind him of the vegan rule beause I was too afraid to do it myself.

That place of meekness, I realize, will cause me to inherit nothing but anger, and I need to fight my own battles. I think my irritation with being an “Olive Branch Vegan” was not with  being diplomatic, because I really actually enjoy talking to people about veganism in certain contexts and being the vegan people feel comfortable coming to with questions, and all that. My frustration was borne of subverting my passion regarding animal rights and my own lifestyle in order to avoid any awkwardness that comes of me taking this moral stance. The awkwardness is unavoidable, I now realize. And I need to be OK with that.

I’ve had some really rotten experiences over the years as a vegan, as I think most vegans have: some from my family, who have thankfully mellowed in their aversion to my chocies; some from colleagues, who have been complete buttholes to me; some from friends who have hurt my feelings inadvertently (thankfully this last group is very small). I am actually incredibly lucky to have such a sturdy support structure  and good friends. My rage wasn’t about them, it was about me, and my own decisions that have led me to what I perceive as a path of moral invisibility. I’ve worked out a lot of that rage and feel a lot better about it now.