Ravings from the ravine 7.26.21
For every week I do not write an essay, I will be listing out snark, small observations, and Internet things I cannot unthink.
Where do dreams go?
When I was a child, I wanted to be an animator.
I would create my own storyboards through blank pieces of paper and pencil. Papers would cover every inch of the dining room table. You could not make out the tile of the floors because, eventually, the papers would cover all that too.
My parents were more than tolerable about it. In fact, they soon saw the dining room as my creative studio rather than a place for formal events. The holidays were the only time my art studio was cleaned out to be a standard dining room.
I know other parents would not have put up with that. I know that not many parents would have put up with an eccentric, quiet little girl. My childhood was never easy. It could be fraught with dysfunction, especially regarding my father. The tension crackled like a bite of lightning. But I know that other families would have broken me in the hopes I became a more palatable girl. My parents never did that. And I always appreciated it.
I think it was the outside world that broke me.
I’m going back to dreaming about my art and my writings at least. I have so many ideas that are still in the fetal stage. I hope I can bear them all.
I have been going back to reading for fun, slow, and stirring like a pickled animal in a preservation jar. I have a lot to read. There’s Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, and Jennifer Gunter’s The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina--separating the Myth from the Medicine. I also hope to get started on Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
I feel this need to read as much as I can as if I am going to die too soon. Is that how feeling alive is like?
You can try not being the Office Creep
Actually, I was wrong in my Tweet above.
The first story I read had to do with a woman’s ex-husband. And while the letter writer does not explicitly state that the other woman was an intern, she was her “protégé.” And I’m going to go on the chance that the mistress is a younger woman. Because men like this are like the Evil Queen from Snow White. They think by being with younger women, they can steal their youth to be young men again.
Before you read the first story1, I do have to give you big content warnings.
There is a loss of pregnancy among other injuries from a car accident. The letter-writer is dealing with some ugly feelings right now about two people that hurt her going through a terrible ordeal.
What we often think of as inhuman is oftentimes the most basic human instinct.
The other one is less horrifying and tragic but does indeed deal with a woman’s boyfriend leaving her for an intern.2
The second story is in the first question in a list of questions. And I note in the comments (same username as my Twitter one) that the letter-writer needs to be careful because the intern and ex might be trying to paint her as the Crazy Ex™ to their bosses.
Call me old-fashioned, but when a shitty man and his mistress are close by the woman they betrayed, they are seldom nice about it.
Trump-era journalism needs to go.
Can you believe that Michelle Wolf at the White House Correspondents' Dinner happened only three years ago? And it’s still timeless.
I also need to know her routine for her curls. They’re always so shiny and bouncy but that’s my hair envy is for another day.
Dhaaruni3 linked a great article4 a few days ago.
And how the media treats news like trashy reality television.
Here are two particularly vicious excerpts from the piece.
There is a certain type of political analysis piece that seems designed to spark debate amongst the political media elites that dominate Twitter and drive the hate traffic that funds a lot of media in the Facebook Era. The gist of these pieces is that they treat politics as entertainment or reality television. In doing so, they highlight the fact that some national political reporters are insulated from the consequences of politics. These media types are able to revel in the back and forth, because their well being isn’t on the line during election season. They have a good job, health care, and don’t have family members living in fear of deportation or state santioned bigotry.
and
Essentially, Shear argues that Trump was more entertaining because he could say something insane or offensive at any moment. Another way of putting it — Joe Biden is more boring than Trump because he doesn’t commit a half dozen moral and criminal offenses on Twitter before 7 A.M. Outrages are exciting. Substance is boring. Making a gaffe is interesting. Making a difference is tedious. The danger of political reporting that devolves into theater criticism is that it incentivizes all the wrong behavior. Attention is the lifeblood of politics. Something is backward when solving a complex problem without a hitch is ignored because it’s boring and picking a Twitter fight with a random celebrity allows you to dominate the conversation for days.
In the end, this line of thinking is an indictment of the media, not Joe Biden or his speechwriters.
Stop being part of the problem, you jerks.