When she was seven.
A poem to her teacher, by our very own Baby Goat, Anne.
Fierce then.
Fierce NOW.
God, I love and admire this girl.
She’s now 22.
I think we did good.
LOOK OUT, WORLD.
And because of this, Jesus punished me…and now I HAVE FLORIDA EVANS’ NECK.
Jesus don’t want my fatass for a sunbeam.
Esther Rolle was GODDESS.
Huh. I don’t know about this. With all due respect to those who might disagree with me and those whose experiences might be different than my own, but this just seems to be more of the whole, “Oh, My God, I Am So Offended” meme that is unfortunately part and parcel of our culture right now. To me, it seems like just more POLITICALLY CORRECT BUSYWORK. I suspect that the attention hyper-focused on this whole Ethnicity Question is a far bigger issue with the WHITE PEOPLE who are now bending over backwards to be sensitive to the feelings of the NON-WHITE PEOPLE…than it is with the NON-WHITE PEOPLE THEMSELVES — which, at the very least, means that it’s coming from a good and positive place…and I can MOST DEFINITELY get behind that. But something just feels…I don’t know, forced about this. Yet another reason to be UNNECESSARILY OFFENDED. I will admit, however, in the spirit of full disclosure…that being the lightest-skinned motherfucker in my clan by several shades, I do possess my own share of WHITE PRIVILEGE — but make no mistake: I am NOT a white person, nor do I identify as a white person. I am, listed by amounts, a Latina/Asian/European/Jewess Trollop. I was raised by brown people with spicy tongues. That is where I come from. That is who I am.
In certain circles, I can certainly appear white-ISH, but I grew up in a family of EXPLICITLY BROWN PEOPLE…and have been asked, pretty much all of my life, about my ethnicity — by both white AND brown people…and never, NOT ONCE, have I EVER felt insulted, offended, or put out, and neither do any of my sisters or cousins, who ALL TOTALLY look gorgeous, brown, ethnic, and “exotic”, and have also been asked all their lives about from whence their family hailed. We are working class people with FAR, FAR bigger fish to fry than getting our feathers ruffled by some nice lady on the bus asking us where our grandparents came from. So, with all due respect, I gotta say that if someone THOUGHTFULLY (THOUGHTFULLY being key here) asks you about your ethnicity or your family’s place of origin, out of just friendly curiosity, and your first impulse is to be PISSED OFF…then that is on YOU. That is reflective of your own discomfort, not necessarily the intent of the person asking. Also, don’t forget…THERE IS NO RULE THAT YOU HAVE TO ANSWER.
Also, I think a LOT of this has to do with a person’s general life outlook just going in. I tend to be outgoing and totally open to new people and new ideas and building communion with other people — others may not have the same outlook and may feel threatened by someone inquiring about their life or their background. It takes all kinds. By my reckoning, I think that we, The Left, as a culture, have become TOO soft, TOO easily offended, TOO eager to take offence at anything and everything where NO OFFENCE WAS NECESSARILY INTENDED…and as a result, I believe we do ourselves and our “agenda” (a word I use here simply for brevity, i.e., equality, justice, inclusion, etc) a HUGE disservice. It’s sort of like the boy who cried wolf. If we are constantly howling, “OH, MY GOD, I AM SO OFFENDED!” at every little thing…then when the time of TRUE horror and injustice comes when we REALLY should be howling and offended (i.e., the murder of Trayvon Martin)…it all just sounds like so much more liberal sniveling.
Look, I might very well be an asshole for saying so — actually, now that I really think about it, I probably AM an asshole — but I sort of LIKE IT when people just straight up ask me about my ethnicity. Rather than establishing an “otherness”, I find it to be an extraordinarily BONDING experience, i.e., when people’s ethnicities are thoughtfully brought up in a room full of people who don’t yet know each that well, it immediately charges the resulting conversation with humor, passion, reflection, recognition, communion, and an openness that might otherwise never have happened. Me? I choose to swing the camera around to see an entirely different angle on this whole Ethnicity Question. I choose to NOT be offended…but to be FLATTERED, AMAZED, and DELIGHTED that someone else gives a fuck enough to even ask about from who and where I am descended.
In other words, I choose to use The Ethnicity Question as a way of KICKIN’ “THE OTHER” IN THE FUCKIN’ TACO…not to feel DEGRADED by it.
So, speaking only for myself, if you happen to see my fat, brown, scandalous ass at a cocktail party or bowling alley and you find yourself wondering from which ANCIENT MUD CULTURE it is that my pipples hail…ASK THE FUCK AWAY — and thank you for being interested enough to ask in the first place.
My beautiful grandfather, Gaudencio Gascon Viloria, at age 18.
Straight outta Manila, baby. PHILIPPINE ISLANDS REPRESENT.
It’s not just that she was a CONSTANT, RELENTLESS, RUTHLESS, TRUTH-SEEKING, IRRITANT to the most powerful men in the world who hid behind an iconic podium and shook and cowered in their $2,000 shoes before her — it was that she was COMPLETELY FUCKING FEARLESS in her CONSTANT, RELENTLESS, RUTHLESS, TRUTH-SEEKING IRRITATION. With Helen Thomas and her perpetual red dress firmly planted on her dedicated perch in the front row of the White House Briefing Room, they got away with NOTHING. She was both their TORMENTOR…and their LIBERATOR.
For SEVEN DECADES…Miss Helen Thomas was THE QUEEN OF DGAF. For SEVEN DECADES…when it came to hunting down THE TRUTH, she gave a fuck SO much, that she DIDN’T GIVE A FUCK — and because of this unbowed tenacity, she earned the respect of journalists, politicians, and citizens alike, from BOTH SIDES of the political and cultural spectrum. As a Feminist, even as a young girl, she was a HUGE hero of mine, inspiring me all of my life to PUSH ON…HARD and WITHOUT FEAR.
Her Kind shall not pass this way again.
Requiescat in pace, Miss Helen Thomas.
“As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it — whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.”
— Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
— Banksy
Vacuous Muff Fact #977:
I meticulously keep every receipt I receive from every department store, Ethiopian restaurant, dry cleaner, dress tailor, hot dog stand, yarn shop, and library check-out — not because I am some uber-bookkeeper (in fact, I am exactly the opposite), but because you never, ever know when you might need to produce an alibi with a time, date, and proof of your whereabouts. My darling husband, Gregory — who was raised as the child of academics in the rareified air of the privileged Upper-Middle Class — thinks I am completely insane for my reasoning…while I consider my actions to be perfectly logical. What I explain to him is that these seemingly excessive safeguards are most certainly the shadowy vestiges of a Working Class upbringing…in which you never know when you might have to cover your ass with the law, and you never know when you might have to pack your shit and jam in the middle of the night.
In my life, I have had to do both.
“We get covered up, we disappear, not to be seen, because we are no longer young and beautiful and sexually desirable. That’s such a shame because everywhere else in the world they prop older women up on statues and platforms and podiums, saying, ‘Not only is this a woman who is beautiful, but she has life experience too.'” — Actor, activist, and TOP SHELF PIECE OF ASS STILL, Kim Cattrall, on aging as a woman in America.
“Wife.” – the number one answer given on Family Feud to the survey question, “Name one thing that men replace when they achieve wealth and status.”
God, I love this fucking country.
It don’t matter. Saggy, shriveled, ancient balls that look exactly like Black Mission figs or not (GOOGLE THEM. I BEG OF YOU) — I would SO totally nail this fucking guy…if for NO other reason than just to be able to tell my grandkids the entire scandalous, sordid tale as a goddamned bedtime story someday. “Yes, My Precious Babies — your Granny BANGED JACK!”
“Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because, deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said “thank you” and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand at post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.” – Col. Nathan Jessup, “A Few Good Men”
muffy bolding 
