Last Week

Last week, the two bills up for public hearing in Massachusetts (for the two relevant legislative bodies) addressing the discrimination of trans people in housing, jobs, and (as the right wing bigots love to flail about:) bathrooms, came up. In Massachusetts there are a handful of cities that protect trans people from discrimination. They include: Boston, Cambridge, Northampton, and I believe Amherst (maybe another).

The courthouse in which the bill was being heard? Boston of course, after all it is the capital.

A funny (hah. hah. fucking hah.) thing happened though at the courthouse. With scores of trans rights activists (and just regular old Janes and Joes) running around and testifying on the discrimination they've faced because of being trans, a woman at the courthouse was thrown out of the women's bathroom.

Apparently after entering the bathroom, another woman at the courthouse ran out of the facility to get a state trooper. And that state trooper told her that if he ever saw in that bathroom again he'd arrest her.

What was this devious woman doing in there? Peeing while trans.

I know, it's not much of a punchline, what with the fact that people like to flip the fuck out because of this all the time. What with the fact that trans women are routinely harrassed when they go in the bathroom. What with the fact that women have been followed to the bathroom and threatened with bodily harm and murder, and when police show up, they SIDE WITH THE PERPETRATORS of violence.

I wasn't there (Bluejay was). I wonder if that woman had already given her testimony, I wonder if anyone spoke about what happened that day in the court. I mean: that was illegal wasn't it? She WAS in Boston wasn't she? Isn't that the whole point of the law that already exists in Boston?

Not Perfect: More Tim Minchin

I've been listening to/searching out Tim's stuff now since Tuesday, and so far I've found multiple things I really like, and nothing that I dislike. And here's the problem: all the good stuff, it's really really good. So good that I would like to learn to play it/sing it. (I guess that isn't a problem). But (here comes the problem), I can't. I mean, I'm not a 31 year old married Australian. Other awesome artists with moving love songs and the like have the decency to make it either really specfiic, but clearly as "story", or super universal. Not Tim, oh no, Tim wants to make it all about him, him, him. Selfish bastard, I want to make it all about ME, ME, ME. But now I can't. So you'll just have to listen to "Not Perfect" by Tim Minchin as played by him instead of as played by me because he's a selfish jerk.

[Tim Minchin, sitting at piano speaking into mic]: This feeling, you know that feeling you get when you feel like you’re the smallest [gestures to self] doll in a babushka doll?
[Audience Laughs, Tim Minchin gives meaningful look]
This is a song about that.
[Starts playing piano chording slowly]
[Singing]: This is my Earth and I live in it.
It’s one third dirt and two thirds water.
And it rotates and revolves through space, at rather an impressive pace, and never even messes up my hair. [Some audience giggles]
[Tim look as though he just thought of something] And here’s the really weird thing: the force created by its spin is the force that stops the chaos flooding in.

This is my Earth, and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect.

This is my country, and I live in it.
It’s pretty big and nice to walk on.
And the bloke who runs my country has built a demagoguery and taught us to be fearful and [sung with derision] boring. [Applause]
And the weirdest thing is that he is conservative of politics, but really rather radical of eyebrow. [Laughter and applause]

This is my country and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect.

This is my house and I live in it.
It’s made of cracks and photographs.
We rent it off a guy who bought it from a guy, who bought it from a guy, [audience laughter] whose granddad left it to him.
[Tim looks like he’s mentally searching for lyrics] And the weirdest thing is that this house has locks to keep the baddies out but they’re mostly used to lock ourselves in.

This is my house and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect but it's mine.

This is my body and I live in it.
It’s 31 and 6 months old.
It’s changed a lot since it was new, it’s done stuff it wasn’t built to do [audience laughter]: I often try to fill it up with wine. [audience laughter]
And the weirdest thing about it is: I spend so much time hating it but it never says a bad word about me.

This is my body and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect.

This is my brain [audience laughter][Tim sings high pitched] and I live in it.
It’s made of love and bad song lyrics [ashamedly sung]. [audience laughter]
It’s tucked away behind my eyes where all my fucked up thoughts can hide, ‘cos God forbid I hurt somebody.
And the weirdest thing about a mind: is that every answer that you find is the basis of a brand new cliché. [audience chuckles]

This is my brain and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect, I’m not quite sure I’ve worked out how to work it.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
[close up on Tim playing outro]
[Applause]
[Spoken]: Thank you.
[Bows]

as always, as complete a transcript as I can make

There are just so many things to love about this song:
Every time I hear him sing about the "force created by the spin" of earth, it makes me wonder yet again at how crazily lucky it is that life even exists, let alone you and me*.
When he sings about Australia, you can tell that he really cares about his country and wants to see it get better, and seeing that reflected in his lyrics about the "locks to keep the baddies out" that are "mostly used to lock ourselves in" is just wonderful as well.
I think anyone who's grown up in our body-shaming culture can relate to the body verse, and at least for this person with depression: I really felt connected with the pressing need to try to protect people from myself.



Hmmm, maybe with a good U.S. related re-write of the country bit I could perform this myself. It might just be worth it.


*which has been helped along considerably by the fact that I am currently reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins wherein he talks briefly about all the exact little things that went into creating this planet that is suitable for carbon based life, of which there are a considerable number, (and that doesn't mean I think this was "designed" for us. As, uh, (thanks yingyang)someone whose name I can't remember Douglas Adams said, that'd be like a puddle looking at it's place in the world and saying "wow, I sure fit in this here puddle quite nicely, it must mean that it was MADE for me", which I think we can all get the humor of quite well without an explanation of).

You say "Funny" I Say "Beautiful"

I have found one of the best, most beautiful and moving love songs to ever grace the internet ("If I Didn't Have You" by Tim Minchin. I'm totally serious when I say that listening to it repeatedly for the transcription was hard because I kept almost tearing up.

Now, this is technically a "comedy" song. Or by "technically", I guess I mean that the singer is among other things a comedian and that the audience has reason to laugh periodically during it.

However, this is indeed an absolutely beautiful love song.

*Background vocals are in parentheses

[Spoken, low voiced and breathy]: So, uh, I'm married. And, uh, the woman I'm married to I met in High School, and this is a song I wrote for her. It's called: "If I Didn't Have You"

[Sung, Romantically, "Spanish" Guitar in Background? with R&B beats]:
Yeah, yeah,
If I didn't have you.

If I didn't have you to hold me tight,
(If I didn't have you)
If I didn't have you to lie with at night,
(When I'm feeling blue)
If I didn't have you to share my sighs,
(Share my sighs)
And to kiss me and dry my tears when I cry,
Well I, really think that I would...

Have somebody else.

[Laughter]

(If I didn't have you)
If I didn't have you, someone else would do.
Your love is one in a million,
(One in a million),
You couldnt buy it at any price,
(Can't buy love).

But of the 9.999 hundred thousand other possible loves
Statistically some of them would be equally nice
(Equally nice).
Or maybe not as nice but say:
[gester/half shrug]smarter than you,
or dumber but better at sport or...
tracing.

I'm just saying,
(I really think that I would),
Probably,
(Have somebody else).

Yeah. [Shimmies down and up]

(If I didn't have you),
If I didn't have you someone else would do, [shrugs]
(Someone else would surely do).

["Spoken Word"ish]: And look, I'm not undervaluing what we've got when I say that given the role chaos inevitably plays in the inherently flawed notion of "fate" [air quotes], it's obstruse to deduce I found my soulmate at the age of 17. It's just mathematically unlikely that at a university in Perth I happened to stumble on the one girl on earth specifically designed for me.

And if I may conjecture a further objection--love is nothing to do with destined "perfection" [air quotes]--the [gestering] connection is strengthened, the affection simply grows over time:
Like a flower
Or a mushroom
Or a guinea pig
Or a vine
Or a sponge
Or bigotry
[Laughter]
... or a [wide eyed] banana (banana).

And love is made more powerful by the ongoing drama of shared experience and the synergy of a kind of symbiotic empathy or something.

[Sung]: So I trust it goes without saying,
That I would feel really very sad
if tomorrow you were to fall off something high [raises arms],
Or catch something bad.

But I'm just saying:
I don't think you're special.
I mean, I mean... I think your special
But you fall within a bell curve [shows a bell curve with hands].

[Laughter]

I mean, I'm just saying I
(Think that I would)
Probably
(Have somebody else).

["Spoken Word"ish]: I mean I reckon it's pretty likely that if for example my first girlfriend Jackie hadn't dumped me after I kissed Winston's ex-girlfriend Nia back at Steph's party in 1993, and our variables would probably have been altered by the absence of that event to have meant the advent of a tangential [gestering indicating other timeline] narrative in which we don't meet.

[Sung]: Which is to say there exists a theoretical hypothetical parallel life
Where what is is not as it is and I am not your husband and you are not my wife.

And I am a stuntman living in LA [arms up, as though weighing things/dancing]
Married to a small blonde portugese skier [downhill skiing motion]
Who when she's not training
Does abstract painting
Practises yoga
And brews her own beer
And really like making home movies
And suffers neck [gesters to below neck] down alopecia.

[Laughter]
[Predatory, or perhaps mischevious smile]

But with all my heart and all my mind I know one thing is true
I have just [holds right hand at waist level with index finger sticking up] one life and just [holds left hand at waist level with index finger sticking up] one love and my love [open handed toward audience/"you"] that love is you.
And if it wasn't for you
Baby
(really think that I would)
Probably
(Have somebody else).

Yeah. [Shimmies up and down]

(If I didn't have you)
If I didn't have you someone else would surely
(Someone else would surely do)
Dooooooooooooo.

[Applause]

as always, click for as complete a transcript as I can make:

Some notes:

• Tim Minchin apparently always performs barefoot, this indeed makes me happy.
• Additionally, there are lyrics online for this that seem to indicate that there is a longer version. However, I am going to say that I feel the other version is decidedly less good. In the excised portions, he goes for, shall we say, "easier" laughs. Eh.
• Greta Christina's Blog is the sole reason I saw this. Thanks Greta!

Everyone I've shown this to so far, has found this silly or funny. And I get it, I really do, the humorous aspects of it. But mostly when I watch it I think of living my life with someone I love. Knowing that the fact that we met and got together was a random chance, that any of a number of things could have gone entirely differently, and that our relationship, as all relationships, is a gamble.

My and Bluejay's getting together story isn't simple (though no one's really is): we met because his ex-girlfriend went to the same college as I did, and she in turn started dating someone who lived in my dorm, and that significant other of hers became friends with Bluejay, and she was invited to visit our college. I was in a (new) monogamous relationship with (the here-after named:) the estraNged*, and it would be a stretch to imply that I was immediately attracted to Bluejay, I was so wrapped up in being with the estraNged. Months later, after the estraNged and I decided to move to Boston (itself a haphazard choice) for the summer, ze had to just about drag me to the Dyke March here, which is where Bluejay and I re-met, and when Bluejay asked for my number, (and there were still further twists).

I tell this not just because I like to hear myself speak/see myself write (though that's true too), but also to illustrate how really truly much I appreciate the ability to find beauty in random chance love. Because I think that's honestly the case: that all love is a happy accident, making this song profoundly true, and sublimely beautiful to me for speaking that truth.


*This name was decided on jointly by us, thus making "estranged" actually, patently untrue

[Edited to fix bad coding]

Quitting Work

Ever since I got my acceptance into the MSW program I've known that I had to quit work. At first I thought I'd tell them right away so they could have a while to find someone, but then it just never felt like the right time.

However, these past couple days have been truly stressfull, and last night I had a horrible anxiety dream where my boss was evil (she isn't), and I hated her (I don't) and she did something horrible (can't remember what) and I quit. This morning when I woke up I knew that I Needed to stop fucking around and actually do tell her that I'm leaving.

It went surprisingly well, especially with the anxiety that I'd been heaping upon it. Then I realized, leaving, what about this that made it so hard: I've never had to do this before. I mean sure, I've been working since I was legally old enough, but it's always had a clear ending in advance. The summers ended, I left town for college, the stipend was for X months, I left college for the rest of the world, rinse and repeat. So this is the first time that I've had to have a talk about it. It should have been obvious to me what the problem was, but being in it, I was unable to have the necessary distance.

I'm just glad my anxiety was misplaced.

An Open Letter to Sascha Baron Cohen

Mr. Cohen,

We need to have words. Namely we need to talk about this "humor" of yours. Mr. Cohen, I've heard somewhere that the humor in your movies is in showing the bigotry in seemingly otherwise nice individuals. That the point of Borat is to show hidden racism and the point of Bruno is to show hidden homophobia.

Mr. Cohen, give me 10 minutes and the internet and I promise I can show you all the bigotry you want. Here, an example: by Womanist Musings, an article about two separate cases of latino men who were attacked by otherwise "nice" people. One of them is dead. In both cases the perpetrators got off with a laughable sentence.
Perhaps if you're in the mood, you can scroll down to the comments where I talk about the recent case in Massachusetts where 4 queer friends were attacked by a group of men who screamed "die faggot" at them and beat and kicked one of them unconcious, and left another also with brain damage. In case you're wondering, the only man charged with the crime will never serve time because the judge decided to give him probation. Mr. Cohen, is that hilarious enough for you?

Or, in case those are too far removed, too distant for you, I can tell you about some things I know personally. I know personally that as a queer youth, I was subject to the most hilarious situation when I was basically told by a lady in a restaurant that my affectionate kiss of my partner was X-rated. We were told to not kiss in front of her kid. Perhaps you could put that in your next movie meant to show exactly how funny bigots are.
Or maybe, you'd like to talk to an acquaintance of mine who had the hilarious experience of having someone she thought of as a friend cross the street to get away from her. See, it was halloween, and she's black and she was dressed as a man. HILARIOUS huh? I mean, you can't MAKE SHIT LIKE THIS UP, it's just SOOO GOOD when you realize that people you know and thought of as friends apparently find your race terrifying.

So basically Mr. Cohen, if you want to show homophobia and racism, you actually don't need to get dressed up in characters. All you need to do to find hilarious bigotry is follow around someone who is actually a target of it. And if you want to show how bigoted other people are, you DEFINITELY don't need to do it in supposedly "funny" characters.

Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure I think bigotry is all that funny.

Maybe that's your problem.

Sincerely,
The Deviant E