Pop-Princess Happiness Isn't Transferable

 

Fandom these days is leaving me feeling like I’m missing a gene as a lady, right?

 Because the last thing I feel like doing in the brief reprieve before the gates of true meteorological hell that is July in my state open up and unleash their full fury is debate whether Tay and Travis are wearing tulle or taffeta. I really don’t get the Swift phenomenon (Katy Perry’s songs are at least as good in my uninitiated opinion, and she is following more of the pattern that untold hours of “Behind the Music” might lead me to expect and finding more joy in interpersonal relationships as she hits a career valley.) I didn’t ponder Taylor for the same reason I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about why people who grew up behind me prefer sour-apple candy to lime for their green-candy wants. I might not agree with it, but it’s not for me. (In pop years, maybe I’m Lucy the cave-woman.)   

I don’t think anyone is interesting enough for the kind of saturation coverage that she gets, but it gives me plenty of time to wonder how one might run an empire with one expression—admittedly a peaceful and happy-looking one—on one’s face at all times. Sometimes I think of her like a Beefeater that I either want to break up with uncontrollable snorting laughter or totally disgust, depending if I’ve had a happy time that day myself, which, mostly not, lately.

When I am feeling *massively* uncharitable, she sort of resembles an offspring that might have come from a Bambi/Barbie pairing I might have dreamed up in that brief window when I still played with toys but kind of knew what sex is. I can’t believe she’s an It girl, no matter how refreshing it seemed at the beginning that we never came close to seeing her cooch, but, again, more for others! And, nothing like love with a football player to ensure a relationship of peaceful longevity, but, hey, somebody probably pulls it off.

Sometimes it’s funny to imagine myself, in an alternate universe where both my appreciation of Courtney Love (“Live Through This” is pretty brilliant) and my heavy Internet use could happen at the same time.  At least I would know how my life got thrown away if I were part of some grassroots army that thought it was our job to beat back Courtney’s bad press—I might have still been there, like Ringo Starr answering Marge’s letter on The Simpsons, but to Ms. Love’s credit, I doubt that she would accept that.

Maybe it’s Gwen from   No Doubt that makes a better analog—Tragic Kingdom being a big old breakup album and all that.  I suppose I rooted for her to find happiness with her cowboy, but it’s clearly not a chicken-in-every-pot scenario, or Oprah showing up all “Everyone in the audience gets a cowboy!” (Would I enjoy him? Maybe one like Raylan Givens.)

For K, Now More Than Ever!

 I always imagined I'd post something about him one day, and probably not just because he has been one of my best audiences for a long time(among almost too many other things to mention, considering that we've never been around the corner from each other or anything and have only shared physical space twice in many years of association and affection.

We could almost think we made each other up,at this point, except it would be hard to imagine that a voice from my head would love me that much. Since he does,and I have had *some* physical evidence, I have to conclude that he exists.

Like so many other things, though, this didn't take the shape I expected, though I thought of him when I bought a beautiful anthology calledSearch Work  because of the struggles so many, including K, have in the 21st century job search.I've been worried about that, even if I don't believe Real Jobs are golden tickets anymore.(The link is to a livestream of  the book's launch, which explains it better than I can, except I'll say that the designer made the book literally a beautiful physical object that made me wish I had the patience to design an anthology. I'm not sure I do.)

Now K. is having a health crisis, and is even wondering how much he is sharing with the disability community--I hope it doesn't make a bad activist for me to refuse that particular "recruitment", but I care about his happiness even more than solidarity or representation or not feeling alone on an ironically rocky life path.(I'm not really asking for anything right now, just trying to keep this blog where my actual mind and heart are, as usual, barring the occasional bandwagon or bit of emotion-bait,)

But it has always felt weird being me and saying "Get well soon." If not for the media, I might not ever see that as a possibility. People tell me about someone who cut her toenails too close and died the next week.  You know? 

Writing(and file-searching) Crosspost...

Can't find my file, from Dreamwidth 

I'd be more prolific if I didn't do stuff like this! 

What The...Furious Jumping?

 

I don’t want to be cured to watch a movie, indeed if the unimaginable happens, I might waste the first few days taking showers and changing clothes just because I might do it unimpeded, and, speaking of doing things unimpeded, I might spend a few months after that waiting out the incubation period of something or other.

I don’t want to be cured to watch a movie, but there are definitely times when I think my disability messes with my interpretation of the viewing experience.  Like when I thought for the longest time that Betty Draper had multiple sclerosis instead of January Jones being kind of a bad actress that “Mad Men” didn’t want to write for, okay, so that is a bad example, but there are times I wish I didn’t have to bring the kind of baggage that makes “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” into a sort of horror movie. 

Sometimes I wish I could have sat there with my Coke and have been like “Interesting challenge, creating a character who is, like, pure id,” or whatever the true goal was at the beginning of “Poor Things” was supposed to be that I didn’t see the same way at all because I, too, have a giant file on me that causes more pain than it ever relieves.(Though I’m not sure how many women, disabled or not, who read about crime as much as I could see in prostitution a path to solvency, adventure, and self-discovery—we could wish that for them, I suppose. Maybe “sex work” is, though.)

Even if I hadn’t ended up liking the movie in the end, it was nice to see something that cared about the script and wasn’t all wrapped up in franchise potential and selling happy meals   .(Would almost like to see those—might end movie merchandising  for a generation for little Timmy to try to collect all the pig-goats, hee  hee!)  I really did like the joy it took in human appetites, too. Nice for a change. I’m glad I hung in with this one, even if mutilation metaphors kind of cloud my spirits. Not as much as being the  true focus of attention at the “Marijuana can mess up your baybeez!1” movie freshman year of high school, though—I try to be over that, and I am really, truly not, especially that my contemporary reaction was “My god, I’m nowhere near that ugly…am I?”

 

Didn't Quite Finish "Turn: Washington's Spies"

 before it left Netflix, but the Revolutionary-War drama provided as close to a binge-watch as your Bohemian Crip is most likely to attempt.  Generally, it's about the journey, people, though maybe I wish I'd started on this one a bit faster.

Relevant to our interests here, however is the revelation that some of Benedict Arnold's bitterness was related to a battlefield disability sustained while taking big risks.  He was very intrepid, and in his way, an early self-advocate, saving his own leg from the then-customary field amputation, at the cost of a painful and lengthy recovery. Not sure if this counts as *good* representation as between the treachery and the bitterness, General  Arnold...essentially laid down an historical basis/template for every comic-book villain, ever, but I think it's important to remember that, although what we might face is new, disability has been present throughout time.(and maybe we haven't had the full story about him, it's true.)

Nobody Should Ask Me Process Questions...

 I got a big inspiration yesterday while being sick.(Really tired of putting the "retch" in "Inkstained Wretch") But maybe it helped me simplify my vision.

"Maybe They Just Boned, Adrian."

 

My continued search for meaning through exploring my diagnosis has slowed a bit. Probably a modern-day Thoreau would have some thoughts about quests undertaken via Facebook, but I'll spare you. What did I expect? Cheat codes?(Not exactly, but kind of, I think. Sigh...) Feels weird that I don’t have a faction in a Persistent Internet Argument but I don’t feel such overweening pride in my disabled identity that I wouldn’t switch it, but I don’t have loads of abled dreams, anymore. Only a few times since high school. It’s lonely not to have a side, in addition to not answering any deep-seated questions, even when I wasn't sure what I was really looking for, anyway.  Such a habit to be disappointed I don't have it, though.  When in doubt, play the hits! And, no, no rotation of new, instant internet besties, much less(heh, heh) a...lid...for my...um, pot.)

I suppose it’s not unusual that thinking about my life would make me remember a documentary, but instead of “Crip Camp” or something like that,I’m reminded of a moment in the Adrian Grenier documentary A Shot In The Dark. If you haven’t seen it, the actor/director drives across country, from maybe Brooklyn to New Mexico, to see the father that he never met. His friends are patient with his cosmic side, all of his musings about the confluence of factors that brought his parents together(Maybe more likely as an actor who won the appearance lottery) but it’s a long trip so his female  friend ends up rolling her eyes and saying “Maybe they just boned. Adrian.”

Maybe CP is just an accident,too.. I can't decide if that would make me sad or free me up.

I wish I didn't want to take the next decade or so and put it in a box labelled "Free To A Good Home"  .