geordiewilliamsflantz

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She used to think there would be a greater sense of forward movement in her life, but now it seemed like where a person ended up was going to turn out to have everything to do with where she started.

Kathryn Davis, Duplex

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me too.

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"Data from Public Policy Polling show that a third of Mr. Trump's backers in South Carolina support barring gays and lesbians from entering the country. This is nearly twice the support for this idea (17 percent) among Ted Cruz's and Marco Rubio's voters and nearly five times the support of John Kasich's and Ben Carson's supporters (7 percent). Similarly, YouGov data reveal that a third of Mr. Trump's (and Mr. Cruz's) backers believe that Japanese internment during World War II was a good idea, while roughly 10 percent of Mr. Rubio's and Mr. Kasich's supporters do. Mr. Trump's coalition is also more likely to disagree with the desegregation of the military (which was ordered in 1948 by Harry Truman) than other candidates' supporters are. The P.P.P. poll asked voters if they thought whites were a superior race. Most Republican primary voters in South Carolina-78 percent-disagreed with this idea (10 percent agreed and 11 percent weren't sure). But among Mr. Trump's supporters, only 69 percent disagreed. Mr. Carson's voters were the most opposed to the notion (99 percent), followed by Mr. Kasich and Mr. Cruz's supporters at 92 and 89 percent. Mr. Rubio's backers were close to the average level of disagreement (76 percent). According to P.P.P., 70 percent of Mr. Trump's voters in South Carolina wish the Confederate battle flag were still flying on their statehouse grounds. (It was removed last summer less than a month after a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston.) The polling firm says that 38 percent of them wish the South had won the Civil War. Only a quarter of Mr. Rubio's supporters share that wish, and even fewer of Mr. Kasich's and Mr. Carson's do. Nationally, the YouGov data show a similar trend: Nearly 20 percent of Mr. Trump's voters disagreed with the freeing of slaves in Southern states after the Civil War." Jesus fucking Christ

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“We know that athletes, musicians, and actors all have to practice, rehearse, repeat things until it gets in the body, the ‘muscle memory’ but for some reason writers and visual artists think they have to be inspired before they make something, not suspecting the physical act of writing or drawing is what brings that inspiration about.  Worrying about its worth and value to others before it exists can keep us immobilized forever.  Any story we write or picture we make cannot demonstrate its worth until we write or draw it.  The answer cannot come to us any other way.”

-Happy 60th to the glorious Lynda Barry!

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Christmas Night

Oakland on Christmas day feels like a ghost town. Walking down my usually packed street, I got a sense of how it would be if most everyone decided to never step out of the house again, or to just give up and leave.

I was driving home alone late from a lovely Shabbat dinner in Berkeley last night when I saw white cops jump out of their car and start talking to a black man on the corner. 

It should have been a busy intersection but it was dark and still Christmas. I tried to see what was happening but I had a green light and there was a bus behind me and an embarrassing fact about me is I’m a little afraid of busses. A few experiences with being nearly killed that I’ve perhaps unfairly pinned on the public bus system. One time a bus really almost ran me over and another time I was held up at gunpoint and it honestly had nothing to do with a bus but I took a break from public transportation because it gave me the illusion that I was doing something to control my safety. I knew it was an illusion but I did it anyway and the fake fear stuck. I do still take the bus sometimes but I’m always intently looking out the window, worried that I’ll miss my stop.

So I drove ahead and looked for a place to pull over but I felt confused and overwhelmed and kept driving and looking back over my shoulder. I was sleepy and cold and wanted my bed. I turned right and right and right until I saw that the police officers hadn’t even found a proper place to park; they just stopped driving and got out. And another police car was pulling up. One of the cops kept hitting his flashlight in his hand. I parked and got out of the car and saw that I had done a terrible parking job and got back in and pulled closer to the curb. The bus was gone. I had no idea what I was doing but I knew that someone needed to be watching. 

The three cops and the man they were detaining stood on one corner talking and I stood on the corner across the street watching, hoping that they saw me but too nervous to get any closer. My phone can’t record so I used it to call my cousin for advice instead. He had me write down license plate numbers and I watched them cursorily search the man. Other cars drove through the intersection. I tried to think about what I would do if they turned violent. Who would I call? I know many people have been asking this for a long time but I still don’t know: who do you call for help when the emergency responders are creating the emergency? I started thinking about who I knew who lived nearby. They were all on vacation. I was getting very cold. The cops let the man walk away, stopped him to make sure he didn’t walk into traffic. One of them looked at me and I looked back at her and she looked away. 

I got in my car and drove home and hated everything. Suddenly I remembered that these people were working on Christmas.

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Romantic love as most people understand it in patriarchal culture makes one unaware, renders one powerless and out of control. Feminist thinkers called attention to the way this notion of love served the interests of patriarchal men and women. It supported the notion that one could do anything in the name of love: beat people, restrict their movement, even kill them and call it a “crime of passion,” plead, “I loved her so much I had to kill her.” Love in patriarchal culture was linked to notions of possession, to paradigms of domination and submission wherein it was assumed one person would give love and another person receive it.

bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (via notaboutliving)

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Das Wunderzeichenbuch (The Book of Miracles), Augsburg, 1552.

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So when you think you have it bad

“Possibly the greatest headline EVER. Minneapolis Journal, 1906. Via @HorribleSanity” 

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Skeletal Creatures Carved From Everyday Objects By Maskull Lasserre

We last featured the wonderful and bizzare sculptures of Canadian-born Maskull Lasserre last year. They are always a lot of fun so this morning we take a look at some more of his incredibly intricate work. Lasserre spent the most of his childhood in South Africa and has exhibited across North America.  His drawings and sculpture “explore the unexpected potential of the everyday through allegories of value, expectation, and utility.” Source:juxtapoz

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A photograph from the 1870’s showing tens of thousands of bison skulls. They were mass slaughtered by the U.S. Army to make room for cattle and force Native American tribes into starvation.

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The 10 Scariest Pictures You’ll See This Halloween

Forget ghouls, goblins, and graveyards — these 10 statistics on women’s equality reflect a reality far scarier than whatever comes out to haunt on Halloween.

Read the full blog.

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Mad Max: Fury Road BLACK & CHROME

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Love these.

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So it took me a seriously long time to get this up here, but New Genre #7 is finally a reality. Inside find my story/series of short-shorts "Parents of the Apocalypse" as well as fine fictions by four others, most playing with form or style in some way and all with a sci fi/horror/dark fantasy bent. If literate, literary genre fiction is your thing, email adam_golaski@brown.edu. Pay what you want, plus shipping and handling.