Modifications Don't Have To Be Ugly, and More Queer Eye Revelations...

 

 

 

As Kurt Cobain wrote years ago, “I’ve got a new complaint,”, and when that happens, I swear there’s a part of me that wishes there’s a big “Gratitude” emoji or some kind of court reporter that could pop out and, you know, stipulate to all the ways I’m you know, #blessed, even as I see all the ways that it and I, could be better all the time. And, like, maybe this one is crazy-shallow, but I do think aesthetics can be a reflection of who matters, who gets to leave a mark—who gets to look and who gets to look back, blah, blah,(If you  went to college you’ve heard these things….again, #blessed(Ish?)

My modified bathroom(Again, a gift that young people starting out can’t be thinking “Of course,” because austerity comes more than Ron Jeremy in his heyday) is really fucking ugly.  Like Texaco at midnight fugly, despite all the women’s touches Actual Mom and I put out to put lipstick on this pig.  But, you know, I didn’t pay for it except with my dignity and a truly inhospitable renovation process—it’s been long enough and tumultuous enough that sometimes I hope those guys died in a 4-car pileup with the guidance counselor that mixed me up with the mathlete in the Rascal I never even met. We learn to accept “kind of works”—doorways you only fit through if you’re up on fiber and meditation, having to fit your whole life on three shelves that are arms’length, and it’s not enough.  Even with long arms. And, you know, both the blessing and the curse of Queer Eye” is the gentle way it assures you that you, yes, you, are living in a hovel right now, and it’s not fucking great.(But it could be fab.) Years ago, they did some work for a very cool guy who’d been through a lot, namedSpeedy , and it was a revelation.

Nothing they did was ugly.(Although they saw four apartments before they could find one to modify, it should be noted…housing crisis, right?)

Nobody said “Somebody will be there to help in the kitchen.(One of the million reasons I can’t cook, and I’m over fifty.)

What would it be like if we all got modifications from people who cared? Speedy deserved it, but what if we all did? What if we all stopped buying shower chairs that were band-aid colored? 

* This post was edited to add a link.  I'm not sure how great it looks because I would never do insta because photos of me? Yikes. 

"We Die When We're Silent," thoughts on Fool Volume stand-up special(and other stuff)

Vir Das 

had big plans for his award-winning stand-up career before he woke up one morning unable to speak. His lack of voice, likely brought about by a combination of physical and emotional factors, came about just as he was about to start a Netflix special from shows in three countries; India, the UK, and the United States. Just six weeks before it, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever speak again at all.

He has made a similarly wide-ranging special that features a big tour but said that it isn’t exactly the same special because “When your voice comes back, it sounds different.”(Personally, I feel a little bad that it took weeks of crisis, silence, and a big medical journey for me to discover this comedian’s work…he’s pretty good, even without the “Ooh, ethnic copy!” of it all—Netflix still has a clear advantage over the other streamers I’ve sampled this summer when it `comes to the quality of featured stand-up acts, in my opinion, which I hope you care a bit about if you’re reading this.

And, yes, I am always a little excited—if not, you know, Excited, when I can bring  Bohemian Crip readers something a bit outside the narratives we all know, such as the Optimistic Child Who Doesn’t Know She’s Broken Yet.

Much like Apu with the Stereotypes bowling team on The Simpsons,”They begged me,” my best shot at being recruited at anything, but at this point, I think I’ve aged out of what is clearly a young woman’s game.  I coulda been a contender…if it stayed 1983 forever.  Alas.)

I do think diversity is important, though as someone doing a lab(our) of love by keeping this up, I can’t promise that I have a running tally of percentages of world populations in my head so that it’s absolutely, full-on representative.  I pretty much know that I won’t be doing that that precisely, ever, unless some kind of contract changes hands.I hope to do enough to make the De Sanctis types reach for their smelling salts on a bimonthly basis.

Wouldn’t want my disability to Hold Me Back, right?

Started Watching Superstore Recently...

 

Kind of love it that the character in a wheelchair on “Supestore” can be a bit of a weasel that doesn’t try very hard.(Well, okay, maybe not at work…he seems like the sort of person that doesn’t bring his passion to the workplace…I’m still catching up with this show, so we’ll see what happens as eps go on.  But every “Attitudes Are The Real Disability” aficionado deserves to meet at least one Garrett.
 It feels bad to say that I’d have liked him to face more barriers(I love the character and he’s black and disabled…anything else, bitch?) but it would be easier to talk about barriers in real disabled life if people didn’t think the answer in fiction isn’t “Poof! There’s a law so everybody made the doorways wide enough.” Because it makes people think everyone’s doorways really are wide enough, and they’re not.  At all. So I kind of need Garrett to get stuck a few times(And really, the law should have worked better, but that’s beyond the scope of this post, for real.)

I also can’t believe that people at the store, just kind of privately wonder about the source of Garrett’s disability, which goes past Doesn’t Match My Experience Avenue and might just go zooming right into the science-fiction section if this freakish luck holds—If I had time to write fanfiction for every sitcom that helps me sleep(Not cause it’s boring, just cause I trust it) I’d set up that Garrett set up some kind of pool or something and circulated some crazy tales, only to divulge that he was in an accident in elementary school. In my experience, people seem to need to know this before they can get to know me; an accident at birth seldom provides a gritty-enough tale for this sort of listener, definitely not one a person can’t live without, but what do I know?