I don't like to brag about times when I'm in a similar situation. Though I suppose if you were invited it may be different.
It's not easy being mainstream.
Liberals Without Modifiers think everyone else is more special than they are. Conservatives Without Modifiers think they are more special than everyone else.
I assume I'm going to regret this post.
Depends. How many other people representing how many ethnicities were at the party?
Distribution, collect-the-set, I don't know.
I'd think you'd want to minimize the number of races for maximum liberal cred. You want to be the sole spectator, not have everyone on equal footing.
I suppose you get points if anyone pointed at you and said, some of my best friends are white.
Although you could make the opposite case,I suppose.
10 to 8. 9 might be how you win.
8: But if it's just you and a whole bunch of people of one other race, it smacks of tokenism.
Let's all share our SAT scores, incomes and ethnicities.
Isn't the goal to accumulate tokens?
If you had maximum ethnic distribution, it could have looked like that old Coca-Cola ad or Peter Brook's Mahabharata.
4: Maybe? I have trouble making sense of it: you want to be congratulated for being down with the gente, as we used to say around these parts, and you don't have a group who will provide you with those strokes?
Eh. Anyway, Grandma should have sat herself down with cousin and just asked for that holding hands moment herself. Or she could have started talking generally, at family gatherings, about her friends' gay grandchildren, so that cousin might understand that she was open. I speak from family experience.
That's what my mom's artwork is like. I've never attempted to tell her that it's a bit heavy-handed.
I'm the only truly white person wherever I go.
you want to be congratulated for being down with the gente, as we used to say around these parts, and you don't have a group who will provide you with those strokes?
You're reading me loud and clear. Gimme tokens.
Or she could have started talking generally, at family gatherings, about her friends' gay grandchildren, so that cousin might understand that she was open.
She never shut up about her activism. If my cousin knew she wanted the Formal Door Opening Ceremony, I assume he was actively avoiding the predictable interminable self-congratulatory monologue.
Heebie, I think you need this app.
Gimme tokens.
Has someone told you to check your only-white-people-at-the-party privilege yet?
22: Why, how much is that worth?
19: Huh. It sounds like the self-congratulatory routine is off-putting, then. "It's not all about you" and so on.
I will say that when we're dealing with older people, many of whom really do and have to overcome previous biases,* they should probably be given some stroking for the overcoming they've managed.
* And I don't just mean white older people.
how much is that worth?
10 tokens.
It sounds like the self-congratulatory routine is off-putting, then.
Maybe so.
Was this some kind of St Patrick's Day thing? I hate to break it to you, but just because everyone else at the party was wearing green doesn't mean that they were all Irish.
The Irish are technically white, anyway.
The only-white-person-in-the-group experience is an important one, because there is value in having the feeling of ethnic-outsiderness from time-to-time, and it makes the stain of one's own privilege feel all the more acute. To brag, its actually a situation I find myself in on a regular basis, and I count myself lucky on that account. What strikes me about it is that its a situation that is rarely or never experienced by probably a majority of white people.
Today is apparently Benito Juarez's birthday, which is apparently a holiday in Mexico. Is that what you were celebrating, heebie?
The Irish are technically white, anyway.
More like translucent amirite!
Some of us can never be the only white person in a room, just the whitest.
17- It's ok ogged, you're white where it counts.
The only-white-person-in-the-group experience is an important one, because there is value in having the feeling of ethnic-outsiderness from time-to-time, and it makes the stain of one's own privilege feel all the more acute.
I do agree with this unbearably earnest statement. I'll just silently take comfort in the fact that I haven't even mentioned the other times this has happened.
There's a really fine line between noticing your privilege and taking your privilege out for a stroll down the street.
Privileges need TLC or else they wither and die.
36: At least you don't get stopped and frisked.
Yeah, 9 doesn't work when you try to say it yourself. "I'm the white best friend of some people."
That's the great things about privilege. If a police officer wants to fuck with you, you just bust out your privilege card and you are good to go. Don't leave home without it.
I'm about to go grocery shopping. Let me check my privilege - yep, right there.
When my son was about 5, I took him and his friend, another blond, to a waterpark in our suburban area. Unexpectedly, several church groups were coming in buses that day, and apparently very few locals. So at one point there were 50 or so toddlers splashing in one pool,only two of them white. I congratulated myself both for being liberal, and for choosing a day when it was exceptionally easy to keep an eye on my boys at a distance.
To the OP: Bonsaisue took Rilee to a birthday party this morning. Rilee was the sole whitey there, but the only one with finger-tattoos. Well, I did write "BEST" and "GIRL" with a sharpie.
I would just calculate the group's racial Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.
Not *strictly* on topic, but Noser and Rilee requested to watch The Princess Bride again this evening. They're a good group.
We're past 40 comments, so off-topic is fine. And on that note, Ripper may be facing some competition for the title of Most Hardcore IP Lawyer in California.
Tell your grandmother, supposing she still walks this gay earth, that your The Gay friend said...oh, something like "you go, girl" seems like what is wanted. All this rhetoric these days about people not being good enough allies because they want a high five. They can have a high five, dammit. I limp-wristedly high five your hopefully alive grandma for her admittedly rather abstract-sounding activism. As I am wont to say.
She is with us but pretty checked out. She did things like argue and vote that being gay shouldn't be in the DSM, and she was a marriage counselor for a while and some of her clients were gay couples, back in the 60s. She deserves a high five but she's also super insufferable about good things she's done.
I didn't know the DSM was democratically decided. Can you get a petition drive going if you want something included?
Someone should open a bakery in San Francisco that just gives out cookies to straight allies. Actually, someone probably already has.
Then I want a high five and a posthumous one for the DE too, 'cause we never got any for being the only het couple w/ kid living in WeHo.
This kind of reminds me of the time I started to sat something about the reason I take the girls to church when then-tiny Mara was bitching about having to go, and she said, "I know, it's because at church everybody got brown skin! Well, and you." And she's mostly right, really, and making them see me be in a minority role (especially now that they know I'm an atheist) seems very important.
I high five you all, with a cookie in my hand, squish.
I'm not kidding though. In the 90s when it was hardly a given that straightniks had gaywads' backs, I was grateful for people who bothered to be on my side, and I still am even though it is less than controversial anywhere I'm likely to be.
OMG Thorn gets to have Alicia-and-Grace-on-the-Good-Wife conversations with her presumably theist kids in like ten years or however old Grace is supposed to be minus age of Thornlings.
Spinning off a further digression from teo's in 46, but I cannot fathom the appeal of sled dog racing. My route to northern Montana one winter happened to intersect with the Race to the Sky at some remote roadhouse, and sweet Christ in Heaven, suddenly there were hundreds of barking dogs all over the place. I'd rather go to a cockfight or even a NASCAR race.
Once, this winter, the Black employees group at a big office celebrated by giving everyone a cookie. Thinking it was not intentional, but man if it was.
s/b "celebrated Black History Month"
This thread reminded me I have a cookie, which I'm now eating. I got it yesterday at KFC, probably because I was the only one there not on staff.
Also, just watched the first three episodes of The Muppet Show and holy shit, JH and them must have been fucking stoned all the time. The sorta-washed-up-chantoosies-from-a-different-era human guests are also pretty incredible.
Cookie is meanwhile the best character on Empire. Which on some level I'm sure I started watching for a cookie.
58 wuzme. Re: 63, I once had to review what turned out to be the worst novel I've ever read; the main character was named Cookie, and the name was mentioned infinity times. CookieCookieCookieCookieCookieCookieCookie. It was like the Ludovico technique, so I can't even stand the sound of the word anymore.
Yeah, Smearcase, white people watch Empire? I mean, at least you're gay.
And we totally have The Good Wife dynamic, I think, and it will be worse in a decade if they stay believers, though right now they're both a bit heretical. But mommy, don't you at least think God is in our hearts? No, dear, but if that's your governing metaphor you could certainly choose a worse one, etc.
Empire is great, it's basically Black Dallas, and everyone wants to watch that.
Oh, Smearcase, I never got back to you about that episode-before-last of The Good Wife. It did seem off the rails but so did the Elsbeth Tascioni episode earlier in the season and they got back on track after that. The last episode seemed more normal but I'm not sure I'm on board with the whole Alicia-and-what's-his-face thing.
I just don't think it ever goes well when they go into anyone's head. I'm all "ok, Ally McBeal."
1.5 negronis gets me to that "isn't it fabulous being us" place, it turns out.
I'm trying to love Cookie in a way that doesn't engage the whole thing where a black woman says something outrageous and all the gay men snap and say "oh you're such a diva" because that's obviously kind of vexed.
And what are the writers doing with Finn Polmar? Or: why aren't they doing anything with him?
Is Empire another thing I should be watching? I only just now got around to watching the first few episodes of the first season of Justified.
If someone mutters sexual orientation based slurs at you (eg: "fucking breeders") while you're walking through your neighborhood and you want a liberal high five should you shrug it off, be deeply hurt, or yell back?
Empire is silly fun. It is not as good as Bona Uxor by a long way. We watched like two episodes of Justified and I'm on the fence about it. It seemed...pretty good.
it's basically Black Dallas, and everyone wants to watch that
That actually sounds all kinds of awful.
72: tell a gay friend who will reassure you that those people were being trashy unless you were at that moment like...shutting down a bathhouse/drag bar to put in a Baby Gap in which case YOU DESERVED IT.
It makes more sense to 72 though. Let's stick with 72.
Capitol Hill in Seattle is losing bathhouses & drag bars to bridge-and-tunnel bars. I think a Baby Gap would support fewer gaybashers.
58: If they weren't illegal, I'd probably go to a cockfight. I don't get why they are illegal. They don't seem very bad as long as we're going to eat a bunch of chickens anyway.
When I was growing up cockfighting was still legal in parts of NM. (It was legal at the state level but could be legal or not by county, and all the more populous counties had banned it but most of the rural ones hadn't.) At one point in high school my friends and I hatched a crazy plan to try to go to one, but it never came to anything, which is probably for the best given my bird phobia.
If the bird brings a knife, you bring a gun.
The birds do in fact have knives (or blades, anyway) strapped to their feet. I think their owners would object if you shot them, though.
I think the blade is tied to the spur, which, along with 'eggs taste good' is why you don't have hen fights.
Anyway, obviously I agree with 77 on the ethical point. It would be one thing if we had a societal consensus that killing animals is wrong, but the current system where we allow killing them for some purposes but not others doesn't seem well-justified to me. I can see the idea that food is a more justifiable reason to kill something than sport, but then again we do allow sport hunting of wild animals, so. And we kill a lot of chickens for food, way more than can plausibly be considered necessary for basic subsistence.
81: Yeah, that sounds right. I researched this a bit at the time (and even wrote an article for the school paper on the general topic), but I've forgotten a lot about it.
82: Well, I think something like bull baiting is right out even if we eat cattle.
As long as they let the bulls gore a few drunken tourists first.
I thought hens were pretty docile, roosters less so.
I don't know. I mostly seem them after they are breaded.
82: Manner of death has some ethical weight here. Which of course is an argument for allowing cockfighting, where at least they die as valiant free chickens.
Anner of death? I'm not even making sense.
Huh, I hadn't realized bulldogs are called that because they were originally bred for bull-baiting.
I wonder if anybody tried to roosters with knives vs. dogs? Maybe a cheap Roman patrician?
I have a sneaking suspicion that both the vegetarians and the ethicists (not to mention the vegetarian ethicists—I'm looking at you, helpy-chalk) are going to be horrified when they see these comments.
Being upset with cockfighting is such a white-person thing.
Anyway, I took a firm stance against having dogs tear other animals apart.
Hens will kill each other - the pecking order can be lethal - but it's nothing like as fast & flashy as roosters.
We've lost a lot of roosters to their job of dying noisily while not killing the coop intruder. Sometimes my mother has a cock or two in a little run away from the hens, waiting to get promoted to the sex and death leagues.
Cock jokes return to the blog, but not in a way that anyone understands.
Wingnut logic holds that in a situation where you could kill someone -- they're a member of an enemy force during a war, for example -- you can certainly torture them, because killing is worse than wounding.
Dogsledding is great fun. And they're mostly quiet when you're going.
99: And yet, in any long-term-care facility, you can probably find someone begging to be let die.
one of the many least awesome things about my mom being in the "nursing home" (which really was one, but for her was for post-op rehabilitative care) was old ladies pleading to strangers for 1) freedom from the hell that is hebrew house and 2) the sweet release of death. different ladies. I ain't NEVER doing that to my mom. easy for me to say, my mom will totally off herself if anything of the sort seems remotely conceivable, but still. god, I shouldn't jinx myself, though; she might have to go in after another surgery and thus could conceivably die in that shithole. that would be the worst. unfortunately she probably won't get the chance because the chemo isn't shrinking her lung cancer. FUCK CANCER.
unfortunately she probably won't get the chance because the chemo isn't shrinking her lung cancer.
Ugh. Sorry to hear that.
The worse part of visiting my Dad in the nursing home was having to disappoint the old ladies trying to recruit my assistance in their ongoing escape attempt.
I'm all "ok, Ally McBeal."
Have I mentioned the time I was in Vienna when the city was plastered in enormous posters for an Ally McBeal-themed festival of revelry, with the enticing slogan "Party with Ally!"?
102: That sucks. Free the old people.
106: I suppose that in a world where furries are a thing, it makes sense that an Ally McBeal themed subculture would exist somewhere. I don't think I would have guessed Austria, though.
I'd like to do a half-remembered TV show theme party. Like, what do I remember about Ally McBeal -- you could come as (anorexic?) Callista Flockheart (sp?), there was Lucy Liu, maybe some male lawyers, was James Spader somehow on that show? There was some kind of love interest. We could all remember the one time there was some kind of conflict about a ... baby? Oh, unisex bathrooms.
The CGI dancing baby could dance.
81 - The difference between hens and roosters, from what I know, is that while hens are awful, nasty things they don't automatically try to kill any other hen they can, whereas getting two roosters to fight to the death isn't really any more complicated then putting them close to each other. This also seems to me to be an important (ethical) difference between cockfighting and dogfighting, where some kind of abuse is actually required. Cockfighting seems to me to sit at around the level of rat baiting. I'm ambivalent because I'm not sure how well it reflects on someone if they really enjoy it. But it doesn't look like some kind of moral evil either, or if it is it's taking a lot of things people think are unproblematic (like mousetraps) with it.
James Spader was in the last season not of Ally McBeal but The Practice. There was one crossover episode between the two shows where Calista Flockhart and Donna Hayward glowered at each other and exchanged barbs about their weight. Now ask me if I remember the name of the client I met Wednesday!
Have you tried just calling all your clients "Calista"?
so sorry about your mother, alameida.
Long-term-care in general seems like a bunch of least-bad solutions adding up to a not-least-bad vortex.
Hens & roosters: some hens are always violent, but they usually get eaten, and a fair number of roosters will live peaceably with one another if not in the presence of hens. And the less crowded they are, the less violent. Between that and the spurs, cockfighting is still iffy to me; it isn't *just* the natural propensity of the roosters.
115:2 Yes. I've seen a few post-surgery and long-term places up close, and those were not of the bargain variety. They're yet another reason to keep a gun handy if beyond the have-young-kids-who-need-one stage.
I'm sorry Al. It's tough no matter how much one expects it and tries to prepare for it.
The spurs aren't universal, though - in plenty of places they just leave the natural spurs in place rather than filing them down and replacing them with metal ones before fights.
I have a sneaking suspicion that both the vegetarians and the ethicists
I'm neither but you all are on crack. The entire point of the fight is to get enjoyment from watching a couple animals maim and kill each other. Of course that's different from killing an animal for food and don't kid yourelves, it's totally the same as bullfighting or fighting a bull and a bear or whatever.
I thought a lot of the motivation behind cockfighting bans was class policing. Or at least class policing was a big part of the explanation behind what did or did not get banned. I don't doubt the sincerity of the anti-cruelty arguments in general.
119 is right. I'm going the assume that the foregoing comments were made in a spirit of contrarianism.
Impossible not to think cockfighting means two naked dudes with erections going for swordplay.
I'm going the assume that the foregoing comments were made in a spirit of contrarianism.
Pretty much, yeah. I don't really have strong opinions about this, and I don't have any interest in arguing about it with anyone who does. I do find it interesting as an example of the kinds of factors that go into societal judgments of which activities are and are not acceptable (and I think 120 is right about one of the important factors).
I don't have any interest in arguing about it with anyone who does.
Oh sure, let the roosters do all the dirty work.
Speaking of gratuitous harming of animals, the low snowpack and balmy weather this year is going to mean a crazy early start to flyfishing. Woo!
Heh. Catch-and-release fishing did occur to me as another example of a questionably ethical activity along these lines.
115: No joke. If I ever have a child, I don't want to be a burden to him/her in my old-age. I don't think I'm ready for the biohazard solution, but requiring family to become caregivers is very burdensome. Some people want to do it, but I don't think it's reasonable to ask children to promise not to put you in a nursing home.
Catch-and-release fishing did occur to me as another example of a questionably ethical activity along these lines.
Questionable, yes, but ultimately ok based on the grounds that the fish have to choose to take the bait. A fish decides to kill and eat an innocent fly... maybe getting a hook through the mouth is a form of justice.
Had brunch with my mother today. Her new flock is having tizzies so she's splitting it in two, with most of the hens and one rooster on laying duty, and a broody pair across the way to rear a replacement flock; the replacements, as they will be sibs reared together, are most likely to provide her with multiple roosters willing to live together. We've never made capons. I guess modern birds get big so fast we eat them before they taste unacceptably tough.
Have people been watching Bloodline?
"That's the great things about privilege. If a police officer wants to fuck with you, you just bust out your privilege card and you are good to go. Don't leave home without it."
Some people say they have privilege but they can't check all the boxes. It is all about the privilege intersectionality now.
https://www.usfca.edu/The_Intercultural_Center/Check_Your_Privilege/
As I always say to my failing, flailing female and minority colleagues, why follow when you can LEAD?
I just noticed that the guy without the beard beats the guy with the beard.
"As I always say to my failing, flailing female and minority colleagues, why follow when you can LEAD?"
I don't see race or gender. only winners and losers.
Although 131 is OLD, what I like best is that the white woman and black man are specifically depicted as faltering, and clearly she is running in heels and he was tripped. The photo doesn't even make a case for meritocracy.
Hiring a guy to trip competitors and creating a culture where 1/2 the people have to wear shoes that impede movement could, technically, count as "merit".
"I had the capital to purchase the running lane without trip wire. Capitalism!"
Cheer up, folks. Thanks to Starbucks' new "race together" initiative, all this privilege stuff is a thing of the past.
I heard on NPR this morning that Starbucks is racing backwards away from that campaign.
138: I read that this morning. I enjoyed how the Starbucks representative tried to maintain that this is not being done in response to the entire planet telling them what a dumb idea the whole thing was.
As for being the only white person or couple in the room, I worry a tiny tiny bit about the fact that I probably never have been, despite living in DC for years. What am I doing wrong?!?! But more seriously, we're invited to a baby shower this weekend, we might actually be the only white people in the room, and we're thinking about not going. As great as it might be for our liberal street cred, not actually knowing the mother-to-be makes it less appealing. (She lives three doors up the street from us and we've probably waved and said "hi" to her, and we know the grandmother-to-be much better, but we've never actually talked to her.)(And there are other reasons to not go, and we still might because after all who doesn't like a party, but the racial issue and the "never met the mother" issue are what makes it weird.)
I checked out the Laney College flea market this weekend - first place in some time I was seeing very few white faces. Not many black, though, either - predominantly Hispanic or Asian.
Callista Flockheart (sp?)
I've no idea what species she is, mate. I kind of assumed some sort of extraterrestrial.
al, so sorry about your mother.
140: In favor of going despite never having met the mother, they're nearby neighbors, so it's kind of nice to meet them in a social enough setting to get a solid sense of whether you want to be actively friendly or whether you just want to maintain a smile-and-nod level of neighborlyness. I mean, it's convenient having people you're close enough with to exchange small favors with nearby, and this is a way to get there.
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Incidentally, NMM2 Lee Kuan Yew. I don't know what difference it'll make, he was 92, but it feels like the world has changed.
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I feel like beating somebody for chewing gum.
Totally endorse 144. We're now on those sort of terms with half a dozen close neighbours and it feels much more comfortable all round. Also, by inviting you they're reaching out to you, presumably thinking "Those people at casa Cyrus seem nice, let's see if we hit it off and can be close enough to exchange small favours", so I think unless you have a genuine clash of commetments it would be slightly churlish not to put in at least a brief appearance.
Also, not to suggest any particular childbearing plans on your part, but if you have any such impending plans, neighbors with reasonably close-age kids (if not this one, a future sibling?) are even more useful connections than neighbors generally.
Seconding 144, 147. This is *how* you get to know neighbors. Wrap a package of diapers in a receiving blanket, don't write "Race Together" on it, Bob's your uncle. Also, if I were them & didn't get at least a very apologetic regrets, I'd feel pretty chilled.
I agree with others on giving the baby shower a shot, especially since it's not the all-girl kind that always struck me as sort of creepy.
151: you're super-duper pwned! 131 comments ago.
My instinct would be to avoid the baby shower, so you should definitely go.
144 et al.: Thanks for the advice. We were probably going to at least show up anyway, but the reassurance that it's a good idea will keep us from getting lazy.
148: Yes, we have such plans. Although suddenly I wonder if we've reciprocated and added them to the list of people to invite to our shower? Not sure. I'm less worried about that, because we've invited fewer neighbors in general, but I should probably check.
Evangelical Christian leader Bob Jones III, the chancellor and former president of Bob Jones University, on Saturday apologized for a statement he made in 1980 saying that gay people should be stoned.
Bob Jones is begging you for a high-five, Mr. Smearcase!
Seriously, I think connecting to same-age children in the neighborhood makes parenting a lot easier. I haven't been able to do it well because I suck the ideal times to do so are when you move in or when you have a baby, not when older children of various ages show up. But my neighbors who have that seem so happy and relaxed.
Oh, same age kids three doors down? No question at all -- unless they're super annoying, you're going to want a connection there.
What makes you think Smearcase isn't stoned, peep?
159: You're right, Thorn! He would not be so all alone.
I am really not outgoing at all, but our awesome babysitter got the neighborhood whipped into shape when Sally was a baby, and developed a network of a dozen or so same-age kids in a three or four block radius. The network was life-changingly convenient, and two of the kids are still Sally's close friends fifteen years later.
You don't have to be the neighborhood organizer, but if you do what little outreach/reciprocation you can, you've got a shot of getting swept up into the network, and then you've got minor babysitting exchanges/convenient playdates to amuse a bored toddler with/people to hand off useless baby stuff to or mooch useful baby stuff from -- it's seriously useful if you can get hooked in.
Stereotype check: Are African-Americans more likely to be neighborly? It's true IME, but ME has been limited to homogeneous white suburbs, and majority black neighborhoods with infestations of wealthy, white college students.
Or should I check in with that "Is this racist" guy?
Ok, minor quibble about last night's Good Wife in rot13 because it contains last-season spoilers but V srry yvxr crbcyr jub unir orra arneyl xvyyrq va n fubbgvat jvguva gur lrne qba'g fb zhpu ybir svefg crefba fubbgref, evtug?
College students can't live if you get their body temperature over 45C. Just be sure to heat-treat any new mattresses or cloth items.
161: It sounds like (s)he should carve out a niche for themselves: Babysitter and Networking Specialist.
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Not fully official yet (pending dean approval of department decision) but official enough for pseudonymous blog communication: my girlfriend is getting a job offer at a university 50-odd miles away from me and connected by commuter rail. My biggest source of stress has just evaporated.
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168: Yay, essear! I realize solving the two-body problem won't be enough to get you kept on where you are, but that sounds so much better than some of the alternatives you'd hinted at previously.
Hooray for new sources of stress.
168: yeehaw! The, uh, rocket dog or the, uh, artsy but still pretty elite, uh, cat?
rocket dog
To be henceforth referred to as "Rastro".
won't be enough to get you kept on where you are
We'll have to see how things develop. The place in question (snarkout's alma mater!) had said some things about maybe trying to get me as a target-of-opportunity hire if they hired her, but (pending assessment of commuting practicalities) I wonder if they could be convinced to wait a few years first to see how things work out for me here.
I'm more confused by 171 than I probably should be but presumably the first parenthetical in 174 answers it.
How do they feel about major discoveries?
175: it does. The rocket dog is significantly less prestigious than ABSPE cat, is west rather than south, and has as it's sole claim to fame the rocket-inventing dude.
I don't think rocket dogs are real animals. But they could be if certain academic researchers got back to work.
I don't think rocket dogs are real animals.
I WASN'T JUST SOVIET PROPAGANDA! I WAS REAL!
As if amazed it's his,
he holds his hand up
before the mirror, hand
too big now for the boy's
body, hand he's turning
slowly front to back
to front, then closes to
a fist he just as slowly
opens like an exotic
flower to its full extent.
The boy so newly merged
with the emerging man
it's hard to say what's boy
or man but for the eyes,
the boyish rapt confusion
in the look he looks
with at his mobile features
as he draws a blunt finger
over the shadow of hair
along his upper lip.
Shadow of hair in armpit,
crotch, voice deeper
than it was, then higher,
deeper, while the eyes
astounded, furtive, are the eyes
of someone who can not
quite wake up from the dream
in which he suddenly
discovers he is naked
among a crowd of strangers--
or like the eyes of Laika,
Soviet space dog,
in an old drawing
I remember, the stunned,
not yet distrusting but
no longer trusting look
from within the comical
glass bubble of the gawky
helmet tilted atop
the comical white spacesuit,
as the spaceship hurtles
out toward the stars, the earth
a star behind it, the earnest
dog eyes fixed on black
space like a door
the masters have walked through
and will return from, surely.
Surely they'll come to get me.
Surely they didn't love me
all that time for this.
My biggest source of stress has just evaporated.
And all it took was moving her 50 miles away? Maybe that would work with my wife and kids.
2-body problems suck. Congratulations on partially solving yours!
189 means it's a....feral kitten? Toothless basset hound? I never quite caught on to the whole taxonomy.
I never quite caught on to the whole taxonomy.
Is there in fact a taxonomy? I thought whoever started it (AWB? I think that was the first one I noticed) was just riffing in the interests of google proofing, and it could equally have been done in terms of meerkats and sun bears,
There wasn't a taxonomy originally, just a really egregious humblebrag. I think AWB did try to make it more systematic at some point.
Congrats!
I'm confused about whether all my deductions are right, as the rumor mill doesn't seem to have her listed as an interview, but maybe the rumor mill info has just gotten useless like it is in math.
The rumor mill doesn't list people who already have faculty jobs.