“How can anyone who, while worshiping Zeus the God of Companions, sees their neighbors in need and does not give them a penny – how can they think they are worshiping Zeus properly?”
— Julian, Emperor of Rome, Letter to Arsacius, High-priest of Galatia
You discover that your garbage disposal is really the mouth of an eldritch monster. However, you realize this as you reach inside of it to recover your wedding ring.
“No no no no no!” I fumble for my ring as it teeters on the edge of the drain. “Oh come on!” I exclaim as it tips sideways and disappears. I had taken it off and placed it safely to the side of he sink while I worked, I don’t even know how it got knocked into the sink. Grumbling to myself I roll up my sleeves, make a face, and shove my hand into the garbage disposal.
“Give that back,” I mutter to myself as I feel around, blindly searching for my ring.
“WHAT WILL YOU GIVE ME FOR IT, MORTAL?”
I look around, no one else is in the room. I lean as far to the side as I can, still keeping my hand in the drain, craning my neck for a glance at the TV in the next room. It’s not on. I glance at my phone, still playing the podcast I had started when I started to work.
“I SAID, WHAT WILL YOU GIVE ME FOR IT, MORTAL?” Yup, the voice was definitely coming from the drain.
“How can you speak so clearly with my hand in your mouth?” I ask the garbage disposal?
“I WILL GIVE YOU BACK YOUR….. WAIT? WHAT DID YOU SAY?”
“I asked how you can speak so clearly with my hand in your mouth.” I reach further down the drain, I had just felt something round and metal “This isn’t telepathy,” I continue, “I’m hearing you with my ears, not my brain. But you enunciation is perfect..”
“WHY AREN’T YOU SCREAMING” the voice interrupts me. “USUALLY THE MORTALS SCREAM WHEN I ADDRESS THEM THE FIRST TIME.”
“Buddy,” I say pulling my hand out of the drain to wipe on my apron, “Think about what I’ve put down this drain today. I have to guess you’ve been eating it.”
There’s a faint grinding, unsurprising like a garbage disposal chewing through kitchen scraps.
“YARROW, MUGWORT, MOSTLY THE STALKS, SOME LEMON RINDS, AND A WHOLE LOT OF SALT…..DAMNIT, ARE YOU A WITCH?”
I chuckle, “You caught on faster than the thing in the basement. Took it years to figure out why I said hi to it every time I went down to do laundry. You’re welcome to stay, but I need to finish this spell and I would like my ring back.”
“WHAT WILL YOU GI…” The drain thing starts to ask again, before I cut if off.
“Dude I’ve been feeding you, and I just offered you a place in my home. Give me back my ring.” I hold my hand out palm flat, waiting.
“FINE.” And with that my ring shoots out of the drain to land neatly on my palm.
“Thank you.” I say as I head back to my work table, slipping the ring back on my finger.
“DO YOU HAVE ANY MORE OF THOSE LEMON RIDS?” my new house mate asks. “THEY WERE TASTY.”
“I’ll have a few more in a little bit, be patient.”
“Although we don’t think of Hermes as especially sexual, he was a fertility god, responsible for the well-being of the animals under his domain. He had many dalliances but, because he lived on the boundary, he was perceived as bisexual and is sometimes said to have invented the art of masturbation. (Robert Graves suggests that his rapid growth on the day he was born represents “Homer’s playful obscenity.”)”
This is a person who reblogged a post of mine via some Nazi blogs.
Notice they do not call themselves a Nazi. Instead, they use a collection of dog whistle interests that require specific contexts to be understood as basically white nationalism, colonialist white-heritage ‘antiquities’, specifically white nationalist Christianity, Nazi-related gender roles and ‘traditionalism’. Notice they work with children.
Learn to recognize Nazis. They do not look like goose-stepping jack booted thugs all of the time. Beware.
“traditionalism” is a big red flag with a swastika right in the center.
Louie Gong describes his company, Eighth Generation, as “a Native-owned, community-engaged small business that began when I started putting cultural art on shoes.” It’s true, in 2008, Gong began decorating sneakers and skateboarding apparel with indigenous Nooksack patterns — a move that, as a Nooksack himself, set him apart from the non-Native designers who’d been doing so for years. As demand grew, so did Gong’s ambition.
Here you go, kids!
How to procure Native-American-and-First-Nation-themed items without entitlement or cultural appropriation in one easy step.
BUY THE THINGS DIRECTLY FROM THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES.
Because if they’re selling these representations of their culture and being fairly compensated, you’re not appropriating, you’re appreciating. And helping good folks make a living while you’re at it.
Everybody wins.
^^^this is the difference. participate in the parts of culture that people CONSENT to sharing!! it’s that simple, if you buy directly from the source, they are creating with the idea that people outside the culture will be consuming, and can pick and choose what they are okay with you having.
the same idea as wearing traditional dress that someone of that culture gave you as a present vs. buying a knockoff version for “fashion”
I’ve used this argument for a long time as a difference between appropriation and appreciation. If you are buying directly from the people of that culture you are supporting them in keeping certain practices and talents alive. They are choosing what they share while making a living from their work. You are supporting them, while enjoying their culture. This is not only okay but it can really help people from these communities.
With appropriation, you are taking money away from the people. While mocking everything they stand for, and giving money to big companies who only care about profit, and have no understanding of the people they are stealing from.
Eighth Generation is awesome! They ship fast in addition to having gorgeous merchandise. Five stars.
I appreciate everything in this post
Because it took like 4 steps to find the damn thing, here is a link to the place:
Hey friends! I still need some help with my legal fees! My next invoice is probably close to $15,000. It is expensive to do this correctly and a lot of work and research went into preparing the motion we filed.
I’ve got $6,000 of my own money and if we can get to $10,000 by the end of the month it would be great! Every but helps!
Each donation of $10 or more will receive access to a project @actorslashvampire and I are working on! @stumblingdistance is a zine and music project we have been meaning to put together for years. We have some songs and plan to make some zines to go along with the songs. All donations over $10 will get a zine mailed to you and a download code for a song! It’s super fun stuff.
Hey friends! I still need your help! Reblogging would be so kind of you!
I just made an update that some of those asking questions that I can’t answer would be interested in reading.
I just posted an update including a new filing if you would like to read it.
8 days left to donate!
For folks who are curious about the documents but unwilling to read about a hundred pages of legalese, I’m here to do it so that you don’t have to. I’m a lawyer and a personal friend of Alex’s, and I thought these were great morning tea reading so now I will summarize, though please understand that this is my take and my perspective:
Alex and Joe were together for a while, married for some of that time, and business partners for some of that time at Microcosm Publishing. They both wrote quite a bit about their relationship and other goings-on in their zines.
About ten years ago, Alex realized that Joe was emotionally abusive. Their relationship ended, they divorced. Alex got the house, Joe got Microcosm.
Around this time, they had communication about Joe’s emotional abuse, and both wrote about it in their zines, which were available for public consumption. This is a fact and not up for debate, and it’s well-known through the zine community what happened – as a personal aside, I wasn’t involved much in the community at the time because I was in law school and I knew about it.
Joe has since gotten some therapy, including a diagnosis of Asperger’s under the DSM-IV and now under the DSM-5 Autism Spectrum Disorder. In a move that is 100% pure ableism, he is arguing that he wasn’t abusive toward Alex, but that he has a disability and she misinterpreted his actions. As a personal asde here, I think all of us in the disability community know that autism does not make people emotionally abusive and it’s pretty horrible to say that. However, Joe’s actual legal argument is that he wasn’t abusive, just autistic.
Since their breakup and Joe’s refusal to be accountable for his abusive behavior, there has been substantial backlash from within the zine community. Joe and Microcosm have lost business and been rejected from many events, because the zine community does its best to create safer spaces and someone with a known history of emotional abuse is not going to be welcome in a space where a lot of people have experienced abuse of various types. Joe has blamed being disinvited from these events on Alex, and he is blaming her for his loss of business. He is essentially saying that Alex has huge influence over the entire zine community and can get everyone to do what she wants, regardless of the truth of the situation. In fact, Alex has been very circumspect about what has gone on, and like most people who have experienced abusive relationships, she mostly wants to go on with her life. Joe is functionally continuing his abusive behavior by filing lawsuits against her and demanding that only his re-write of events be allowed to stand, rather than acknowledging that he has alienated many people in this community and people are making their own choices not to associate with a known abuser.
Because Joe is continuing his abuse in the form of multiple lawsuits (this one isn’t the first) he is essentially trying to impoverish Alex into silence, and thus exclude her from the zine community that way – he thinks that if she doesn’t have the money to pay attorney’s fees and satisfy whatever judgment he is fantasizing about, she also won’t be able to attend zine fests and he will be better able to bully organizers into including him. He’s wrong about this for multiple reasons, but that’s what’s happening here.
It has never occurred to Joe that the reason people don’t want him around is because abusers are not welcome in this community, and regardless of what he has done in the aftermath to try to rewrite history and blame his disability, people know what he did and are deciding, independent of any mind-control rays from Alex, that they don’t want him around. As a personal aside, it’s lovely to see an abuser actually lose business and realize they’re not welcome. I wish this would happen more.
If you’ve got a little cash, even like $2, and are up for helping someone who has experienced abuse fight her abuser in court so she can go on with her life on her own terms rather than under his dictates, please donate. This is a good cause, and her lawyer is doing a ton of great work on it, and it will matter for other people who are escaping bad situations and dealing with abusers who just won’t let go.
Thank you for your support and glad this was good morning tea reading! I’m also glad to hear that you think my attorney is doing great work. I have had a really good experience working with Cliff. I’ve also had a lot of help from my friend Amber who has been holding my hard through all of this.
It’s really clear that your attorney is totally irritated with Joe’s intellectual dishonesty. Cliff’s brief is really solid – this is not my field of law, but it’s really well written and his arguments are good. Also it’s hilarious reading Joe’s complaint whining about how people in the scene don’t want him around like that’s solely attributable to you – I knew about this before I ever met you or Cindy because she was blogging about it.
Also I know Amber is all over this, but I do want to say – I’m also here if you want a little support, or whatever. I’m so glad to know you, and so proud of you for how well you’ve been handling this utterly shitty situation.
@fightfortheftr (April 19, 2018): There have been a lot of inaccurate reports that the FCC’s repeal of #NetNeutrality will officially go into effect next week on April 23rd. That’s not true. It’s a bit more complicated than that. Ready? Here we go:
Its understandable many journos are confused by this. It’s legitimately confusing. The FCC order said it would go into effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, which would have been April 23rd. But, it still has to be approved by the Office of Management & Budget.
There was another FCC filing in the Federal Register that would imply the earliest the OMB could approve this (and its worth noting that approval is basically just a technicality) is actually April 27th, but its likely to happen some time after that, possibly even weeks after.
The most important thing for EVERYONE to understand is that nothing catastrophic or dramatic is going to happen immediately when the FCC rules go into effect. Telecom shills will immediately start saying “See? The sky didn’t fall, we never needed #NetNeutrality.“
They’re lying.
The ISPs aren’t going to immediately start blocking content or rolling out paid prioritization scams. They know Congress and the public are watching them. Rather, the death of #NetNeutrality will be slow and insidious. You might not even notice it at first.
And that’s the worst part. What will happen is over time ISP scams and abuses will become more commonplace and more accepted. They’ll roll out new schemes that appear good on their face but undermine the free market of ideas by allowing ISPs to pick winners and losers.
Over time we’ll see less awesome startups. Less awesome videos. Less diverse online content. And we’ll see more content that our ISPs want us to see. The Internet will be watered down and manipulated. It will change forever in ways that harm our democracy.
But it will take time.
So: don’t fall for ISP lobbyists talking points. They’re ALREADY claiming that #NetNeutrality was never needed since the sky hasn’t fallen, and the rules haven’t even gone into effect. But also don’t panic. The Internet is not going to die next week. Keep calm and keep fighting.
The Senate will vote in a matter of weeks on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to block the FCC’s repeal. Now is the moment to get engaged.
The Carving Witch 