Tag: Gloria Steinem

Words

Thursday morning, and another good night of sleep was had! I feel very rested and good for a morning this late in the week. I have a lot to do today at the office, which should help the time pass, and I may stop and make groceries on my way home this evening. I did feel good when I got home yesterday, and so did some chores before giving Sparky a place to sleep for a bit while I watched the news. I know everyone thinks the midterms are going to change things…but my deeply cynical self fears the country has already fallen and there is going to be chaos and violence. I always hope I’m wrong, but I’ve been Cassandra so many times before; so many things I foresaw decades ago have come to fruition.

In good news, piece of shit transphobe Seth Moulton lost his senate primary challenge to Ed Markey, and oh, look! A so-called progressive trashed trans people and wanted to throw them under the bus! “I’m sorry if my words hurt you.” The if is the same thing as a “but” in my opinion and implies he only insulted and offended some trans people. No, bitch, most of us queers support our trans siblings and throwing them away like garbage shows you’d do the same to others if you thought it politically expedient. All that work, your entire career–sabotaged and savaged because you finally showed us who you are and we believed you. Fuck off, and good luck getting elected again in Massachusetts. Any Democrat who throws the trans community under the bus is MAGA but wearing a mask (hello, John Fetterman!), and needs to be thrown under that same bus so they can see how it feels. I suspect they won’t like it–they usually don’t. See: MAGA regrets on TikTok. Like the cattlemen their precious God-Emperor just fucked over. They thought they were hurting other people, and if it affected them, well, he bailed them out with a welfare check last time, didn’t he? It ain’t happening this time, and now they are begging the people they voted to hurt to help them out. My favorite response? Turns out you can’t own both the libs and your farm. NOW you want us to care? You get upset when you ask you who you voted for? I periodically wonder about all the people I cut out of my life for being amoral; are they still proud and gleeful?

I also finished a newsletter and sent it out yesterday, which you can read by clicking here! I watched The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas again1, this time through a more modern lens, to honor Dolly’s passing, and I talked about the movie in the newsletter. I am also working on one to send out on Saturday, and yes, it’s about college football and yes, mostly about LSU. I generally don’t pay a lot of attention to all the rumblings and talk before games actually start–nobody really knows anything about anything yet, it’s way too early in the season–but I did see some stuff about Lane Kiffin and LSU pissing everyone off again; something to do with signing players who had signed NFL contracts but never played or were cut before the season? I don’t know and I don’t care to know, frankly. The whole paying players but they’re not pro is very weird to me, and opened the lid to Pandora’s Box; it also seems weird to say you can’t pay for college and get paid if you signed but never were paid in the NFL? The NCAA is clearly not capable of managing this new system, if you want my unasked for opinion, but there’s naught to do but sit back and see how everything plays out. But I will say–the amorality at the state government level seems to be seeping into the LSU athletic department. This recent thing with Kim Mulkey is despicable–and the rehired basketball coach for the men was fired for cheating the last time he was at LSU. I guess we are entering LSU’s villain era.

Apparently, Gloria Steinem died, which isn’t a surprise as much as it is startling, I guess. She’s been around forever, and she helped change the world for women. Reviled and hated by conservatives for daring to suggest that women aren’t from another planet but actually capable human beings, she just went on telling truths that conservatives didn’t want to hear. I read some of her work back in the late 90s/early aughts when I was trying to undo my male-centering upbringing. It was revelatory; the systemic abuse and control over women the patriarchy encoded into our society is so deeply rooted that it’s shocking when you start seeing the world through a feminist lens. I recommend reading Steinem for any man who wants to unpack his internalized misogyny; it’s certainly an excellent place to start. Personal growth doesn’t end when you graduate high school.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will be back here at some point tomorrow morning.

I’ve always loved the shine of a sweaty torso—but long sweaty hair always looks greasy.
  1. It’s been a really long time; probably decades. ↩︎

Sabotage

So, yesterday was new washing machine day. Thursday evening I took the laundry room apart, went outside and measured the places that looked like they may be too tight for the washer to get through, etc. I also had to move some things around outside as well. But it was finally delivered and installed–right at the end of the window I was given–and then I ran a few errands before coming home to get caught up on laundry and, well, reassemble the laundry room. It didn’t take long, for example, for me to realize that rehanging the doors was a two person job, so the doors will stay down until there’s a day when the handyman is here and I see him outside; he’s very nice, so I can’t imagine he wouldn’t come in and screw the bolts back in while I hold the doors in place.

The new washer is lovely, really; but it is also computer-operated (the dreaded motherboard–which always makes me think, “oh yay, something else that can break”) and it is much more complex and complicated to operate. It also doesn’t have a traditional agitator inside; it’s hard to explain how it actually agitates the laundry, but it does somehow–and the spinning is so strong that the clothes feel merely damp rather than wet when they come out. I also have to get used to the new and different noises it makes–its sounds are vastly different than its predecessor’s, and since the flood when its predecessor broke last week, I am paranoid about washing machine noises.

It’s going to take some getting used to–as well as learning how to use it. My old washer was relatively simple–you chose the water-load size and then selected what kind of cycle and what kind of water temperature you wanted, pulled the dial out, and were done with it until it was finished. This one you choose the water temperature you want, the kind of load (at least eight options) and then the kind of cycle–again, eight options. The basket will spin one direction and then back the other a few times for the sensor to determine how big the load is and how much water it needs–you can also manually ask it to add more water, once the sensor has determined how much to use–and well, yeah, it’s complicated. It’s also “green”–it conserves energy and water, based on those afore-mentioned sensors. (And yes, every time I think “sensors” in the back of my head something whispers something else that can break….)

It also made me curious–when the old washer was taken out and the new one put in, I was able to retrieve some things that had fallen behind it or been knocked underneath it by one cat or the other over the years–we had it for sixteen years and two cats, after all, it was a miracle there weren’t more things underneath it–but the floor was filthy beneath, just disgusting–and of course the delivery guys were on a timetable so I could hardly ask them to wait while I cleaned the floor beneath; which makes me wonder, do people clean regularly beneath their washer and dryer? Considering, in my case, I would have to disconnect them completely and move them out, neither of which would be easy, I am resigned to having a disgustingly filthy floor beneath the two appliances (now I am also wondering about beneath the refrigerator). I would imagine most people probably don’t regularly clean beneath their washer/dryer sets; but I am willing to go out on a limb here and say that my mother probably does.

While reassembling the laundry room I also picked out books to donate to the library, and found lots of books, buried behind stacks of others, that I’d forgotten I even owned. “Oh, yes, I did buy Gloria Steinem’s essay collection, didn’t I? Oh, there’s Rabbit, Run, and that biography of Cardinal Richelieu I was wondering about a few months ago.” So many books–and of course, one of the delivery guys was like, after looking at the shelves in there, the stacks of books on the living room floor and the book cases, with books crammed into the shelves and stacked on top, in a voice of clear wonder, have you read ALL these books?

The answer, of course, is no–one of the things I’ve reluctantly been doing is donating the books I’ve already read to the library sale; figuring that I will never have time to reread them and if I do need to reread them, well, The Reread Project definitely taught me I can certainly reread books in Digital form, even if I may not necessarily want to read them that way originally.

It’s gloomy and raining outside this morning; thunder woke me in the midst of a downpour around four this morning, but the rain lulled me back into a very deep and comfortable sleep, and I suspect it’s going to rain all day–at least it looks that way right now. I haven’t gotten any emergency alerts, so flooding isn’t happening–it’s steady now, not torrential, which usually means the drains and pumps can handle it–but it is indeed a gray morning; perfect for curling up with a book. My emails–ignored yesterday–have gotten a bit out of control (as they always do) and so I am going to have to go through there today. The emails are an endless nightmare for me from which I never seem to be able to either wake up from or get caught up on…but I also kind of snapped this week about them; as always, the stress builds to the point where something in my brain just snaps and I think to myself, it is what it is and I can only do so much per day.

Like, right now I am thinking, go sit in your chair and read for a while—face it all later when you’ve had more coffee and are more awake, and it actually sounds like the plan for the morning. I have to do a ZOOM thing later today for the Northwest chapter of MWA–a question and answer thing for like half an hour about MWA–and I am also going to need some time to prepare for that. There’s also more organizing and cleaning to get done today, and I also started wanting to map out/work on Chlorine this weekend as well as some short stories, and I am going to get back to the gym tomorrow–no desire to walk there today in the rain, frankly–and I also need to start working on the edits for Bury Me in Shadows at some point this weekend. Heavy heaving sigh.

It truly never ends, does it?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader.