The Magic Spoon

Key to the ‘twitter pics’ riddle: the first two words are a homophone of a portmanteau. I thought it a good riddle with a chewy caramel heart in the middle that says ‘i love you’.

You know how…when things you’re really really looking forward to don’t work out because of some stupid little mix-up? 

How it just ruins your whole day? 

Then not only are you sad because of the thing not working out, but also how stupid the whole situation is, and then ALSO because you aren’t having a good day anymore?

It’s like that.

He was sure he hadn’t loved her the first time. No…the first time had been curiosity - the second, confirmation. The third, political, the fourth and fifth routine. Before long their trysts were almost dull, but by then he’d gotten comfortable. When he finally said he didn’t love her, it felt like a lie. It was that, more than the blow, that laid him flat.

Just found myself soabboxing on Chuck Wendig’s blog about supporting small farms and CSA. Thought it might as well be here.

I haven’t actually done CSA personally yet, mostly because of circumstance. However, I can attest personally to how valuable it is to small farmers. Because it’s supporting them directly, the whimsy of the market is circumvented. That means that taxation, subsidies (a wholly fucked system), middlemen, and in short, The Man can’t fuck with what they’re getting from you. Also, The Man can’t fuck with what you’re getting from them If you taste chemicals in your cabbage, you can talk to the person who grew it. The other reason I really stand behind CSA is a more ephemeral one, but it’s one I think someone needs to speak on. Maybe this is too ‘hippy shit’ and all, but shit, times are fucking tough for small farms nowadays. I know this too keenly because it’s an issue my family is facing right now, though going organic did help a bit. I keep thinking that people supporting initiatives like CSA, people going out to *meet* farmers and say hullo to them, people actually connecting to the folk who grow their food can only help our culture get a bit healthier in the way it thinks about food. On an immediate level, it makes the people who are sinking every speck of sweat and money and hope effort they have into keeping the farm going feel just a bit more supported and valued, and that’s important. I think that’s really, really important. …actually, maybe this should have been a blog post instead of some soapboxing on your blog. Sorry, Chuck.

Story inspired by Fattie's rant

I really seriously SERIOUSLY fucking hate it when someone has to put the word positive in as a modifier or as a qualitative statement when speaking about a Black Woman. I hate it even more when it’s applied to me.

I suggested to this new find of mine (@weebeastie on twitter) that it might be telling to start using ‘positive White person’ all the time and see what happens, and that got me remembering something from Uni. I had a professor that was so steeped in Politically Correct language that I really don’t even think he realised what he was doing sometimes, or how strange he sounded,: tying himself into verbal knots, working in all the with the latest nomenclatures that had gotten their fifteen-minute stamp of approval. Listening to him speak was like watching a contortionist, one that constantly modified every pose in case it deemed too suggestive. One wondered, in the end, how he didn’t end up too tangled to talk about anything at all. The wordsmith in me trumps the liberal (sorry, ‘Person of Left-leaning’) and no matter how well-meaning, non-intuitive phrasing jars my ears. I agree most with Francine Fialkoff, when she said: “Ultimately, however, we hope we use language that is more sensitive without enforcing strident political correctness or orthodoxy”. Being subversive lickle me - I can’t help it, really! - I started monkeying his speech, adding my own cheeky bent to it. I started calling myself a ‘person of Brunetteness’, or sometimes ‘Differently Interested’. I started adding ‘As a woman,’ or ‘as a student’ or ‘as an eccentric’ as a qualifer…into almost every sentence, no matter how mundane. Granted, some might say that this was a lickle bit immature, and they’re not entirely wrong. It was, however, my reaction to what seemed to me more a trembling reaction to guilt and apprehension than a true eagerness to use progressive speech, and I guess that just irked me on some deep level. I’d like to somehow have debate on political correctness in speech and its place in the post-ironic world, but many have offered much more well researched and considered essays - not to mention I’d likely only trip over my tongue. Did you read something that struck a chord with you?

This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a while. It sums up a philosphy I’ve long had but never really managed to put into words, nevermind a gorgeous little film.