We're Living In A Parody World

There's just no way this is real. I've been trying to wrap my mind around it and there's only one explanation: we're living in someone's parody of the world.

When the President of the United States suggests UV lights and drinking bleach to get rid of the Coronavirus, you know the world isn't real and there's some teenage boy in charge who just smoked weed for the first time and is giggling madly while making this shit up. In fact, LADIES BEWARE!!  We're probably all going to wake up tomorrow with huge, perky boobs that defy gravity. Cause: teenage boy.

And there's adults out there who are trying to make sense of it all and get us through these times but they shouldn't bother. Cause this kid hasn't tried mushrooms yet and once he does we're even more fucked than currently.

So we can pray the kid's mother shows up and tells him to clean his room and maybe some of this will also get cleaned up but don't hold your breath. Bobby or Jack or Marvin or whatever his name is, well, he's in charge right now. Expect our politicians to go even further banana-pants and the world to get more ridiculous. And don't worry about bras anymore, because our new Double Z's will stand up on their own.

Sparking Some Motherfucking Joy in This Time of Corona

Smart Bitches, Smart Choices

So Carolyn sent me this link today from Smart Bitches and this is among the reasons that Carolyn is my BFF, BWB and BXYZ all rolled up into one. She knows me. I mean, she KNOWS me.

So to summarize: instead of using this time in quarantine to try and accomplish things and cross off items on a to-do list, this is the time to acknowledge that many of us can't make our brains co-operate so instead of trying to create, organize to create instead.

It's a fucking wonderful idea. I love it.

I know I'm not going to start any new projects right now. I have a few almost finished quilts/hangings that I can finish (slowly) but there are others that I'm stuck on. So instead I've decided to start 'project bags'. Using the idea that she discussed in Smart Bitches.

My knitting is still rudimentary although I find it wonderfully peaceful to do. So I have a pattern for a simple shawl which I'll choose some yarn and put together for when I'm ready to knit. There's a simple hat pattern that I'd like to try.

I'm also going to start organizing fabric for quilts.

And... a reading list. Why not do it all? Go though the TBR pile and make a list of the books and authors and blurbs and get that together for future reviews? LOVE IT!!! 

This appeals to my creative but super stressed out self. It gets me on track to be ready to create and maybe even create when the urge hits but to organize sparks extreme joy.

Happy me. Thank you Carolyn.

Oh, and btw: I've started having a nightly nightcap. A large shot of Kalua, a dash of heavy cream, a half cup of milk, a squirt of chocolate syrup mixed and then add ice. It's a decadent, adult chocolate milk. So yummy. And one that I think Carolyn's sister has already discovered but Carol doesn't realize that it's spiked. Ha ha!

Life is brilliant even in quarantine.

The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.

In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.

This book is a killer. I read it yesterday and was trying to explain to Carolyn why I liked it so much and I still can't articulate it that well but I think the author has a friendly voice, although a truly angry tone, I agree with everything and it didn't leave me optimistic but it didn't leave me in despair.

Carol asked me if the writer was glass half empty or glass half full and honestly, it doesn't matter because the glasses are all owned by men anyway.

But here's the thing: I was reading the book yesterday and then at dinner my brother started on  a rant about people trying to take away guns and all that nonsense. And usually I get mad and either stay quiet and seethe or argue and seethe. Last night I didn't do either of those things. Instead I responded but simply and with clarity. So he knew which buttons to push and started talking about female politicians who didn't even know about the guns they were talking about and bringing up "ghost guns" and shit that doesn't exist.

I responded that male politicians don't have the faintest clue about women's bodies and reproductive organs but they legislate those all the time. And that kind of ignorance didn't seem to bother him at all. So I can't be bothered to care if a politician believes a gun round has 15 or 15,000 bullets. She knows it kills kids in school. That's what matters.

So then he went into his favorite apples and oranges about how smoking and cars and falling out of trees kills people and I gently explained that it's not the same thing at all and mass falling out of trees isn't killing schoolchildren.

I didn't "win" the argument. But for the first time in a long time I wasn't upset or enraged after a disagreement. I felt stronger. And I felt like there was a little more steel because of this book.

Lindy West is a writer and she's funny and she knows famous people and she's fat and she lives in Seattle and I felt like she was me and is you and is all of us. But I did relate A LOT. And again, I felt that reading her brought something more to my voice.

I'll read the book again because it gave me words. It's there to strengthen our voices. Such a good book.

Good Day

I'm wearing underwear today. Must be a good day.