Yule

While my annual Yule celebration draws on many Scottish traditions, I must confess that I got a lot of these traditions from my mother, who was a paranoid schizophrenic. Since these traditions could have easily have come from her head as from her ethnicity, it's very possible that we are not having a Scottish Yule so much as a schizophrenic one.

"Saving Christmas" (director's cut)

I was disappointed.  I was expecting the worst movie ever made.  It was not.  I was expecting to laugh uproariously at fresh so-bad-it's-good hijinks.  I did not.  What I got was 80 minutes of hearing Kirk Cameron give an explanation of what Christmas really means that was so bizarre and so disassociated with anything approaching reality that more often than not I just wound up scratching my head and thinking "what?" 

That's not stupidity.  That's schizophrenia. 

My mother was a paranoid schizophrenic.  I know what it's like to try to have a reasonable conversation with them.  When you are in a confined space with someone who is giving you all the details of their particular delusion, you learned quickly to just nod your head a lot and agree with everything they say.  It's safer that way.  You know that they are all smiles and happy while they are confiding to you how the world REALLY works, but if they think for one moment that you don't believe them or are just humoring them, they will turn viscous and possibly violent.

The stuck-in-the-same-car victim in this case is Cameron's brother-in-law.  As he listens to Cameron explain that Christmas trees are little crosses in your house and that we decorate them with fruit so that Christ can replace the apple that Adam stole from the tree of life  (I'm not making this up,) we can just see Brother's discomfort.  We can see that he's thinking "get me out of here.  get me out of here."

At one point, he makes the mistake of questioning Cameron's view by asking, "but what about Santa?  That's not biblical."  Kirk responds by telling him the story of the REAL St. Nicklaus,  an angry man who responds to anyone disagreeing with his views by beating the living crap out of them.   Brother heeds this clear warning and shuts the hell up.

Brother-in-law eventually escapes from the car, breaks down the door to his own house, and looks at all his guests as though he is just relieved to still be alive.   The movie ends with everyone who ever feared for their lives after spending quality time with Crazy Uncle Kirk break dancing.   

Lessons learned

Things I've learned from 40 years of artistic endeavors:
1) Most people don't give a damn what you do.  Trying to get people to care just pisses them off. 
2) Of those that do give a damn, half want you to fail.
3) Half of those that want you to fail will do everything in their power to destroy your soul.
4) "Marketable Art" is an oxymoron. The vast majority of artists of any genre do not produce work that both speaks to their soul and resonates with the souls of non-artists.
5) Only artists with business minds make money at it.
6) Rules 4 and 5 do not apply to me. Therefore, I will never make money for any artistic endeavor I do.

The Once and never again friend

A friend recently posted a picture of women boxing and gave it the caption "Dyke Club." Others jumped on this thread to leave some of the most blatantly misogynistic and homophobic comments I have ever heard on Facebook. As usual, when I called them on their bullshit, suddenly *I* was the target of their posts. When I asked my friend to fix this situation, he said he didn't know that "dyke" was a slur and only removed the offensive replies. I accepted this compromise.

But the assholes continued to post their venom. Not only did my friend NOT delete these new comments, he actually called me a bitch for saying anything and demanding that he fix the situation.

This morning he asked me why I unfriended him. I explained that I will not accept being directly insulted for standing up to bigotry. I did tell him that if he apologized publicly (and no weasel apologies) I would refriend him. Rather than apologize, he said he didn't like being told what to do and removed his entire Facebook page.

Good riddance.

Apologies

Beware of an apology that starts with the word "if" (as in "if my words hurt anyone...") What they are actually saying is "I don't think I did anything wrong, but I will say something that sounds like an apology to the over-sensitive, butt-hurt pussies to shut them the hell up."

Black Friday

I suspect that there is a huge overlap in the set of people that shop on Black Friday and the set of people who don't vote.

quizzes

These Facebook quizzes started off interesting but now they've just gotten silly. No, I am not interested in knowing what color my elephant is. Nor do I wish to discover whether or not I am in pain.

Narcissism

I am not a narcissist but I have inherited a bit of the familial paranoia. It's not the everyone-is-conspiring-against-me sort of paranoia. It's more like the everyone-hates-me kind. A narcissist would take that information and use it against me to try to control me....which a number of people have tried to do.

Meditation patterns

I have noticed a pattern to my meditations. I always come out feeling refreshed and relaxed, but the profound and mind-blowingly deep meditation sessions only happen when I start from a completely stressed and wigged out state. It's like the difference between slipping into a pool from the steps versus diving into a pool from a high cliff.

Fish fingers and custard

For the first meal after my regeneration, I asked the hospital cafeteria for fish fingers and custard. Closest I could find was fish sticks and tapioca. That's the same thing, right?

Wiccan Missionaries

If such things as Wiccan missionaries existed (they don't,) the best tool they could use to convert the heathens would be to point out that Wiccans get to pray to a hot naked chick rather than a dead guy on a torture device.

Real and imaginary

Although I consider myself very religious, I'm sure that most people would call me an atheist. I am completely devoted to the Goddess but do not think she is "real" in the sense that physical objects are "real." In the depths of my most profound meditations, the distinctions of real and imaginary are meaningless.

Fake News

Sites with fake news presented as though it were real say "don't get your panties in a bunch. It's just satire." But satire is supposed to be funny. These articles are not. They exist for the sole purpose of trying to dupe people. Those who put up these sites get off on "putting one over on those idiots." They are proof that trolls exist on both sides of the server.

Ditto

(This is the short short story I am submitting to the Transparent folks.)

I met James when I was thirty two years old.  I had long since given up hope that I would ever find someone to settle down with.  But then James showed up.  He was smart.  He was funny.  And he was …cute.  How could I not fall in love with him?

And he’s right…I mean, she’s right.  James did tell me about himself.  He said that he was a woman inside and that when we made love, I was making love to a woman.  I didn’t think anything of it.  I thought it was a silly little game he liked to play.  Believe me, some of my other boyfriends had fantasies that were much worse.  This one seemed …innocent.  So I played along.  And when it was Jimmye who proposed to me, I said, “Well, thank you for that, but I’m going to have to wait to see how James feels about this.  I’ll get back to you.” 

Our marriage was glorious.  After twenty years we still held hands and kissed each other…in public.  We were the epitome of PDA.  All of our friends kept looking at us as models of how things should be.   They said we gave them hope that two people could actually stay in love.  For twenty years, “Jamesanddelyla” was one word.  In those rare times that we were ever apart, we would call each other at least three times a day just to say, “I love you.”  

 You know that aging couple that made kids run away saying, “Ewww!  Old people are kissing?”   That was us.  It was one of our rituals.  We had a lot of rituals.  You remember in that movie Ghosts where Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore kept saying “ditto?”  We did that.  We did that before that movie came out.  One would say, “I want to go out for dinner tonight” and the other would say, “ditto.”  One would say, “you’re gorgeous” and the other would say, “ditto.”  One would say, “I love you” and the other would just say, “ditto.”   I loved that ritual. 

When James first told me that he just couldn’t live as a man anymore, I didn’t know what to think.  He couldn’t possibly be serious.  Why was he taking the game this far?  I only agreed to let him “transition” because I loved him and I knew he was very unhappy.  I thought he would come out of it just like he had always come out of his depressions before.  But he didn’t this time.

He started taking those damned pills and just became more and more female.  And the girlier he became, the more frightened I got.  Why was this happening?  What had I done to make my James want to leave me like this?  It was like I was watching my husband kill himself slowly. 

And I fought for James…because I knew that nobody else would.   I shouted and cursed at that bitch that was taking him away from me.   But it didn’t do any good.  She won.  I know this is the same person I married, but inside I can’t help feeling that this woman killed my husband.  

I miss James.

Sorry for crying.  I feel like an idiot.  The last time I saw James he had the gall to tell me that losing my love was the greatest tragedy of his life.  I just got up to leave and said, “ditto.”

I see stupid people

As I study history, I am struck by the number of truly stupid ideas that some people devote their lives to....sometimes to the point of martyrdom. In fact, the more stupid the idea, the more fervently its adherents will cling to it.

Romana3.1

Zombie Gundown and Other Tales

Steven Ringgenberg’s new short story anthology, “Zombie Gundown and Other Tales” is an entertaining, energetic, and very readable adventure into multiple genres.   The first (and eponymous) story is an apocalyptic tale with an interesting twist.   What would a zombie apocalypse be like in Arizona, the land of guns?  The answer is that you need guns, guns, and more guns, and if you think you have enough guns you are wrong and need to collect more guns. 

The story involves a group of lounge lizards in a local watering hole.  On the very first night of the living dead, their immediate response is to collect as much fire power as possible. I particularly liked the small detail of the narrator asking who had guns and discovering that nearly everyone in the bar had been packing….only in Arizona. 

The still-living spend the night gathering up the individual arsenals that everyone in Arizona apparently has and bringing to a central base…which should logically be the aforementioned watering hole.  It is a particularly telling comment on the Arizona mentality that on the very first night of the coming of the undead, when civilization has hardly broken down, the denizens of the Red Onion Lounge see nothing wrong with breaking into a gun shop and looting whatever they think they need.   It’s the logical thing to do.   

The story ends at sun up, when the Red Onioners now in possession of more arms than the Iraqi army and setting up on the roof of the bar, finally ready for the masses of undead that will surely come.

This all works well, with the one false note of having the governor of Arizona warning folks that the zombies are upon us.  It would be the role of the police to make these warnings, not the governor.  Nor can I imagine the current governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, would be so empathetic to the plight of the people. 

 

The second story, “Brides of the Wasteland,” is a more typical post-apocalyptic yarn.  Set in the far future, the story revolves around Synwulfe the bounty hunter, working on gaining his freedom by killing his quota of the hordes of mutants that ravage what is left of the earth.  It is an action packed story which exposes its comic book origin.  While the style is very visual and easy to read, the story begins with an overly detailed exposition.  That would have made sense as a sketch for a separate and longer piece but it is unnecessary for the story that follows it.  The salient details of the back story could have been incorporated inline. 

The final story, “The Lurker in the Shadows” is an old-fashioned science fiction bug hunt.  I’m told this was originally intended to be Star Trek fan fiction and it does indeed read like an episode of the show. 

While Mr. Ringgenberg does present us with three entertaining monster tales and has a breezy comic book like style, there is one affectation that just didn’t work for me.  In the two first-person stories, the narrators occasionally have internal conversations that are much more erudite than their spoken conversation.  Consider this passage from “Brides of the Wasteland”:

With practiced insouciance, I took a short pull off my drink and began speaking, “Ya see a lotta weird shit out in the wild zones o’ the Shattered Earth. Hell, I been at the center o’ plenty o’ bad craziness myself…”       

I thought this was an interesting character affectation the first time it appeared.  When it showed up in a second story, I realized that it was a voice error.

This is a minor problem however and does not take away from readability of the stories.  “Zombie Gundown and Other Tales” is not classic literature, but that is not its purpose.  It is meant to be an enjoyable and fast-paced read and on that it succeeds well.

Lucy

As wonderful as it is to see Scarlett Johansson's luscious tuchus in anything, Luc Besson’s Science Fiction Thriller “Lucy” has been heavily criticized as ridiculous pseudo-science wrapped around canyon-like plot gaps and strained logic.  If we are talking about the real world then yes.  All these criticisms are valid.  The idea that humans only use 10% of their brains is an urban myth, and Morgan Freeman’s explanatory lecture at the beginning of the film is a lame attempt to give that myth authenticity. 

In dream space, though, the movie makes complete sense.  The touchstone of the difference between real space and dream space is that in the real world you can’t do magic.  If you find yourself being able to fly or manipulate objects with your mind, you can be sure that you are in dream space.   The only thing that prevents people from doing God-like things in dream space is a lack of control.  That can come with control, practice, or in Lucy’s case, from consuming massive amounts of untested drugs. 
In dream space I have managed to do every phenomenal thing that Lucy winds up being able to do in her drugged dream.   My miracles and apotheosis are not nearly as violent as Lucy’s but it can be excused since her dream space was induced by violence and a very real death threat. 

 
Freeman’s nonsensical expositional lecture is exactly the kind of jumbled logic one finds in dreams.   Arguments like these, non-sequiturs wrapped around symbols instead of concrete concepts, make perfect sense while you are dreaming, but make you scratch your head and wonder “what the hell was I thinking?” when you awaken.

Lucy’s apotheosis revolves around a return to a primordial state.  As she becomes more god-like, she returns to confront the very first human.  She eventually witnesses the birth of the entire universe.  These scenes are dizzying and trance-like and exactly the sort of thing one experiences in the depth of profound meditation or in the throes of what Jung called an “Epic” dream, a dream so profound that it is life changing.  The feeling here is exactly the visceral feeling felt in the last ten minutes of the film 2001:A Space Odyssey.  That film, too, involved a primordial deification that transcended logic.  I had my first religious experience watching 2001.  The self-referential scene of the modern Lucy meeting the Australopithecine Lucy was just as dizzying and ineffable as Bowman’s final meeting with the black monolith.



The plot of Lucy therefore becomes: a woman is forced to act as a mule for untested drugs.  When the pouch carrying the drugs bursts and begins to empty the drugs into her system, she is thrown into a dream state in which she is able to control more and more of her reality.  As she slips ever closer to her overdose induced death, she experiences an apotheosis, resulting in her complete deification as she dies.

The Secret

Forget "the Secret."  Here is the real secret to living a successful and fulfilling life.  

1. Let go of your suffering and your desire...in short,  "Let it be."
2. Laugh and dance and sing and laugh.  You can't do too much of any of these things....especially the laughing part.
3. While on your journey, help as many people as you can.  And remember to do it without revealing your secret identity to anyone....sort of like Batman. 

These rules are of course extremely hard to do, especially the letting go part.  Think of them as goals to strive for. 

Surviving the Total Perspective Vortex

In “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” Douglas Adams describes a torture device called the Total Perspective Vortex. Victims placed inside the device are shown their infinitesimal place within the immensity of the universe. The minds of nearly everyone who is thrown into the TPV are completely crushed by the experience.

Recently, I experienced a series of soul-crushing events that were so extreme and happened so closely together that it was very much like being thrown into the TPV. The experience caused me to back away from nearly all interactions with people until I could reassess my life and my relative position in the universe. 

One ding to my self-actualization came when I discovered that I was forbidden from going to my own granddaughter’s birthday party….again. I knew right away (and had this later confirmed by said granddaughter) that I was not allowed to go because the LDS side of the family “does not like me.” (i.e. I am a freak and a danger to children.) It was a perfect example of irrational bigotry (as opposed to reasoned and rational bigotry.)

I was hurt. I was angry. My rage was justified, but lashing out to that bigotry with unreasoned bigotry of my own was not. My comments on this thread were out of line. I offer no excuses but simply and humbly apologize to my Mormon friends (if I have any left) for my words. 

Another soul-crushing to my well-being occurred when several comedians came together to criticize “burners.” They called them dirty and disgusting and that they should just get a job. Every insult that used to be hurled at hippies was now re-hashed and hurled at people who are dear friends of mine …including my own daughter.

I attempted (perhaps too zealously) to explain that they were being bigoted and prejudiced against people they didn’t know. That’s when the shit storm hit. Suddenly all their ire turned directly at me. My attempts to defend myself only gave them more ammunition. It ended up with personal attacks on my character…that I didn’t know what humor was and that I was a hypocrite. They meant it to sting and it worked. I was in tears.

I did nothing wrong and will not apologize for my words. But in hindsight, my mistake was to get involved in the conversation in the first place. They were comedians after all. Being snarky is what they do. What did I expect? It was like plopping down into a pit of scorpions and saying “say, did you guys ever think about NOT being scorpions for a while?” That sort of thing rarely ends well.
Lesson learned. In the future I will do my best to stay out of any thread that is insulting to me or anyone I love. No more trying to teach a pig to sing.

One word from those that commented on this thread…if someone is already dizzy and reeling from personal attacks and criticism, it’s probably not a good idea …however well-meaning it may be…to add more criticism on top of it.

Several of my critics accused me of being a “narcissist.” This is particularly troubling as several people in the past, independently of each other, have referred to me in this way.

It is doubtful that many of my “comforters” are aware of the clinical definition of narcissism. A narcissist is not just someone who is in love with themselves. They are abusively so. They seek out victims (called the “Narcissistic Supply”) who can provide the narcissist someone to dump on and belittle. A large part of my reassessment consisted of trying to figure out if I was one of these people after all…if the criticism of “malignant self-love” could accurately describe me. I didn’t think I was abusive but I wondered if it is possible to be abusive and not be aware of it. I actively avoided people because I didn’t want to take a chance that I really was a narcissist and seeking out a new supply.
I think now, though, that what my critics were actually accusing me of was something more akin to being “self-absorbed,” and there is some truth in this. Yes, I am quick to take offense. We “People of Trans” live in a state of nearly constant denigration of our very existence, and we cope with it in different ways. Some hide from the criticism and go completely stealth. They pretend that they aren’t trans at all or insist that they are no longer trans. Those that choose to be out about their affliction often have their sense of humor completely burned out of them. Some retreat into themselves and have a difficult time considering anyone’s pain but their own. Almost all develop hair-trigger anger responses to criticism.

Pain ennobles no one.

I think it is unlikely that I am narcissistic in this clinical sense.  Narcissists do not respond to criticism well. They dismiss the criticism out of hand and personally attack the ones that dared to criticize them. I DO NOT DO THAT...so I can completely dismiss anything those fucking idiots said about me.

I’m sure a large part of the accusations come from my tendency to assume that if anyone is angry at all or expressing anger, it must assuredly be because of something I did. This is a family legacy. Paranoia runs deep in our tribe. (I say this not as an excuse for the behavior but as way of explanation.) The important thing is that this week, when I was trying to fit the shattered shards of my life back into something resembling a human being, I discovered that this was my mother’s energy, not mine. Consequently, it was the one thing I wanted very much NOT to reintegrate.
It will be a difficult struggle since I am fighting against my biology, but I very much hope to be able to accomplish this. I have lived with the fear of becoming as certifiably insane as my mother for many years. Perhaps, if I can be free of this, I will be free of that fear once and for all.

In the meantime, I deeply apologize to anyone that my familial paranoia has alienated or offended.