I got an e-mail last night that got me thinking. It was from someone who’d taken exception to the language I used in my latest “Dear White People…” post. At issue were many interrelated things, but one primary concern expressed to me was my choice of the pronoun “you” when I spoke to and about white people. One point brought home to me was that at least this person in specific felt like those “you” pronouns were calling em out to speak on behalf of all white people.

I want to say a little bit about both language and rhetoric in my essays as well as my feelings about my allies, and finally touch a little on tokenizing and being tokenized (i.e. being called upon to speak for a group either in a formal or an informal capacity).

[Read more →]

H said I should post about these, because, well, we both think they’re neat.

I think I got really interested in the past few years in breakdancing and in popping and the various related (martial?) arts because I happened upon a link to the Korean commercial that features breakdancing. You know the one.

[Read more →]

Here’s the biggest problem. People don’t like to be told they’re incorrect (I sure as hell don’t - I instantly start evaluating just how big the set of people it is I will have to notify of my wrongness, among other things).

This obviously gets in the way when having conversations about anything at all, and I think gets worse the more important that incorrect things it the person who holds the incorrect knowledge. Things like… I don’t know… racism?

Anyway, a John Scalzi post and followup comments from the past few days are relevant and, I think, interesting, and I’ll try to get what I can from them as I move through life.

[Read more →]

I won’t give specifics, but I want to say that H is my best friend and co-conspirator and am very happy to have her in my life.

The mere fact that when I am feeling most at sea and most doubt my own sanity, I can talk with her and be reassured that I am okay is worth, well, anything. But it’s definitely worth being able to provide the same sort of support for her when she needs it.

Beyond all her other wonderfulness, this is what I enjoy the most - simply getting each others’ backs, being able to care for each other, being able to provide the support for each other that allows us go go out into the world and do the work that’s important to ourselves and to each other.

I feel like I can never thank H enough for that.

It seems to me that this kind of system could be used for other -isms aside from sizeism, but the folks over at Big Fat Blog have a new scoring system for blog entries and other Internet sources that support reader comments. The scoring system is based on both the tenor of the original article/post/entry as well as on how long it takes for an -ism comment to show up.

Obviously the scoring system presupposes that both the scorer and the scorer’s audience have the same sort of sense of what’s pro- and anti- to whatever cause you’re talking about, but I think it is helpful to overall civil rights movements that are based on rhetoric to have a shorthand for talking about the rhetoric of the opposing side(s) when talking about those sides.

Here’s the post, and also the comment that really gives specifics on the scoring system.

In other news, my WordPress blogging host is being really slow and laggy, and I can’t honestly tell if it’s the network set up at work, or that the host is effed up. It was working fine yesterday, though, unless my time sense was a lot more screwed up from having food poisoning than I thought.

Okay, so maybe I should rename my blog to Angry Halfbreed Queer Chink or something.

When it comes down to it, after the anger or frustration subsides, what I’m left with is disappointment.

(I should note that I am trying to recover from a bout of food poisoning today, so if I sound/read a bit off, that would be why. Not wanting pity or excuses, just giving an explanation.)

[Read more →]

Now, believe me, I know y’all are largely intelligent, curious, moral (or at the very least, expert, differently moral) people. I know that you are good at your chosen professions and passionate and ecstatic at your chosen hobbies. I know that you are capable people who really wish to and by and large do do good in the world.

But here’s my question (as a curious, skeptical, critically-thinking non-white person):

[Read more →]

For the iBook or PowerBook (at least - try Crucial’s Memory Advisor™ tool and see if you come up with DDR PC2700 type memory and you may also be able to use it).

Details below the link/cut:

[Read more →]