seeksadventure | Nov. 16th, 2013

Nov. 16th, 2013

(Content Note: links have content notes, end of the post discusses ableism and slurs for mentally ill.)

Apparently something has happened to make my entire main page (and possibly previous pages, I haven’t checked) appear in italics. I do not like this, but I also do not have time to deal with it just yet.

On to the links.

Picking up where last week left off, more from the new Riddick movie.

Boomtron: Vin Diesel’s Riddick and Sackhoff + These Guys Have Beef

As cheesy as The Chronicles of Riddick was (and as stressful as that weekend was when I watched it; going to see it was my reward for taking the LSAT), I am really ridiculously excited about this movie. I hope it is more along the lines of Pitch Black, which was amazing. Amazing. (Note: I love Chronicles of Riddick, too, but it was damn cheesy.)

Boomtron: Selena Gomez Gets Animated in Hotel

Excerpt: Selena Gomez is the daughter of a vampire in the upcoming animated feature called Hotel Transylvania, and not just any vampire, either. Her dear dad is the host with the most…blood lust? He’s Dracula and he’s voiced by Adam Sandler in the developing Sony Pictures comedy. Today you can see the Gomez character, Mavis, in all her animated glory. We have all new shots from the film.

This sounds delightful, and the pictures are too cute! I’m always up for more animated monsters.

Boomtron: Legend of the Seeker Craig Horner in CW Pilot

Excerpt: Deadline has let us know that Horner has been recruited to play a lead role and title character in a drama pilot called Joey Dakota which would be airing on the CW. Joey Dakota is based on the Israeli show Danny Hollywood. The romantically based time travel show invokes elements of Smash with the male lead being a rock star. Joey Dakota will however center on Maya, played by Amber Stevens (Greek), who is a documentary filmmaker in the process of creating a film about her rocker idol Joey Dakota. Dakota meets his untimely death way back in the 90s which prompts Maya to make the documentary. At some point, and in some as of yet unknown way Maya travels back in time (to the 1990s) where she meets and falls in love with Joey. When she unexpectedly returns to present day she begins her quest to find her way back to the past in order to reunite with Joey and prevent his death.

I hope this makes it to production, because rockstars + time travel + 90s music could be one of the best parts of next season’s line-up.

(Surely I have something in my links file that is not from Boomtron and not about upcoming media.)

Fat Chicks Rule: Will Power Content Note: Discussion of fat hate.

Excerpt (RE Disney’s Epcot exhibit about the evils of being fat): My biggest issue has least to do with the villains (I actually like the Snacker. She can use her spatula wand to make food therefore solving hunger). Maybe they are villains because they are tired of people picking on them. My biggest issue has to do with the hero Will Power. It puts forth the old assumption that fat people are fat because we lack will power, that we are either stupid or lazy for being unable to stick to their diet. Something that simply isn’t true. Most fat people have done things with their lives that require will power and discipline. Fat Studies is an academic field that has people from all types of professional backgrounds including people who have advanced degrees. How do you think they got this far? Does the snacker also have a wand that grants degrees? No, we all worked hard for it (I have two master’s degree, when I did my thesis for my second one, I had to forfeit weekends for three months). So to say fat people don’t have will power is a misnomer. We have plenty of will power. What we don’t have are bodies meant to be thin and all the willpower in the world won’t change that.

Jezebel: Did My Rapist Find Me On Spokeo? Content Note: Discussion of stalking, rape.

Excerpt: Last week, I found my profile on Spokeo after getting a Google alert that there were profiles on that site listed under my name (these alerts can be a good way to see where you’re popping up on the internet). I went to the site, and found a number of listings for my old addresses, but most of them weren’t very complete. However, the one for my last apartment — where my rapist tracked me down — was incredibly detailed. It listed everything from the types of pets I had to my profession, and included a street-view map showing our building. I went to see if my profile appeared on any other directory sites (and there are quite a few out there), but none of them had anything nearly as comprehensive as the Spokeo listing. Was that how my rapist found out where I lived? Quite possibly.

And finally, a rant. (Or perhaps just a link and a lot of expletives. Hard to tell how it will go at the moment.)

Normally, I find adulting: how to become a grown-up in 387 easy(ish) steps to be fairly entertaining, if sometimes shallow (and sometimes really spot-on).

HOWEVER THEN I SAW THIS.

1) Step 128: Do Not Engage With Crazy* and Conversing with the Insane is an Exercise in Futility. always. always. always.

Content Note: Fucking ableism all over the fucking place, in case that wasn’t clear from that pair of titles. I will be quoting below.

The Step 128 post does include a “disclaimer” (and yes, I am using scare quotes as fucking scare quotes right there) that says: *By ‘crazy,’ I don’t mean people who are literally mentally ill, but rather people whose behavior is so far outside the bounds of reasonable human behavior.

Except then the posts go on to include “crazy,” “batshit crazy,” “insanity,” “sanity,” “madness,” “insane,” “sane,” and “formerly sane,” and has such delightful gems as “unquestionably crazy response” and “There is but one direction sanity will flow, and it is away from you as the madness spreads.”

Yes, it is shitty when people say nasty, horrible things to you. Yes, they shouldn’t do it. You know what else shouldn’t be done? FUCKING CALLING ALL OF THAT INSANE AND SAYING THINGS LIKE “DO NOT ENGAGE WITH CRAZY” AND “CONVERSING WITH THE INSANE IS AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY” AND IMPLY THAT INSANITY IS NOT ONLY SOMETHING YOU CAN CATCH BUT SOMETHING YOU WOULD NEVER, EVER, EVER WANT TO CATCH.

You can disclaimer it all you want, but when you can’t use better language to describe horrible behavior than “crazy,” “insane,” “batshit crazy,” “madness,” and more, your disclaimer is meaningless. You are perpetuating the fucking ableism that so permeates this world. You are being the shitty person saying nasty, horrible things.

Fuck that noise.

I have two things to talk about regarding mental illness today.

1) That Kind of Girl

TKOG writes a really fabulous blog, Not That Kind of Girl, [blah blah], but recently I read a piece (or really, series of pieces) in her archives that really pissed me off.

In the first, she meets a guy and gives him her number. They make a date for drinks, but he canceled and they weren’t able to reschedule right away. Which, yes, sucks. What also sucks is casual ableism like this: “Really, there’s nothing lost here: I picked him up in a T station, like a crazy person, and we didn’t even know anything about each other, so, y’know, no big deal.” Which might not be so bad on its own, but these two posts lead up to the post where she talks about their actual date, and that post and the comments infuriated me.

The title of the post is TKOG Who Follows Through and Subsequently Goes On the Worst Date in the History of Friggin Ever. Why is it the worst date ever? Because he was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and he tells her and talks about some of his experiences with it.

The exchange starts like this:

“As we walked to the bar, I launched into a funny story about Kiss-Ducker and I getting drunk in a combination Mexican restaurant slash tranny bar in San Jose.

“When we get together, we’re totally crazy,” I smiled.

“Wanna know a fun fact about me?” he asked. I nodded. “I’m totally crazy too.””

(Note also the transfail.)

If you read the whole post, yeah, the guy’s a little awkward (and he tries to order a pina colada in an Irish pub. Pina coladas are gross, but dude, to each his own), but as soon as she finds out he’s crazy, her language changes. When she talked about him before, he was fabulous and wonderful [insert quotes from first post]. Now that she knows, his attention means he has “crazy eye” worse than she’s ever seen.

They talk about meeting people on the T (which is something she talks about fairly frequently on her blog), and when he says it’s difficult because when you try, people think you’re crazy, she gets skeeved out that he tries to trick people into talking to him, EVEN THOUGH SHE DOES THE SAME DAMN THING WITH HER “LIVE EYES” TRICK.

In her closing paragraphs, she says this: “One thing is for certain: I’m not picking up any more guys in public until I somehow install a better pre-screening process for social dysfunction.”

Because being open about your mental illness is a social dysfunction, I’ll tell you what. /sarcasm

I’m not saying she had to fall in love with him. What I am saying is that she and her commentors didn’t need to be ableist assholes when discussing it. It takes a lot of bravery and strength to be open about having a mental illness, in large part because of this kind of ableist bullshit.

I really enjoyed reading this guest blog by Tansy Raynor Roberts at Justine Larbalestier’s blog: Reading as a Luxury.

Part of it resonated with me, and sparked something I’ve felt for a long time now about digital books versus hard copies. (I remember saying this during my undergrad publishing studies, too, and as much as I love technology, I’m surprised I’m not more sold on digital books.)

My hardwired memory of books is not just about the words and ideas, it’s about the whole product. . . . Leaving Terry Pratchett hardcover sleeves randomly around the house like fallen apple peelings. The flop. The spines. The end papers. The mysterious blank pages at the end of all my Famous Five novels as a child, which I treated as spare paper, drawing tiny graphic novels to myself. Mysterious inscriptions in second hand books.

I love books. I love them. I love reading, of course, but I love the books themselves. One of my earliest memories is my mother reading the Little House on the Prairie series to me. I remember how perfectly, how precisely she formed each word, the way her lips would press together and then part; the rise and fall of her voice, steady and deliberate and calm; and the books, the rustle of the pages, the way the book filled her hands, solid and real. I had those books for years, for most of my life, and I read them frequently even as an adult. I read them to feel closer to my family after I graduated from high school and left home. I read them because, despite the racist flaws, parts of the story still resonate with me. I read them because they were old favorites and when I was stressed about life, they gave me a brief respite that came not just from the story, but from the books themselves, from all the memories caught in the physical feel of them.(1) I read the books until the covers fell off; I taped them back together. I read them until the spine cracked and pages fluttered down like dead leaves; I glued them back inside.

I read them until, in 2005, I realized I couldn’t justify packing and moving tattered books which were too fragile to read ever again.

I still haven’t replaced the books. Someday I will, and when I do, the fresh copies will be crisp and clean, devoid of memories. I’ll hold them and sniff them(2) and read them. They’ll be fresh canvases for new memories, but also, as I read and reread and the paper goes soft beneath my fingers when I turn the page, they will take on the memories I carry of previous physical copies.

I love technology. I love it. It allows me to do so many things. It can’t give me this, though, the book in my hand and all the things that means.

(1) Not just memories of my mother, either. I grew up close enough to Mansfield, Missouri that I was able to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum with a family friend, who gifted me one one of the later books not included in the main set, at least in the 1980s when my mother bought mine.

(2) What? Some people like new car smell, I like new book smell.

(Add http://community.livejournal.com/merry_fates/91264.html#cutid1)