Sleeping In
Dec. 28th, 2020 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraI woke up in the middle of the night and did that thing that sleep experts tell you you’re never supposed to do: To wit, I read the news. Online. The Wall Street Journal.
I rationalized this horrible lapse of judgement by telling myself The WSJ is the only reliable source for international news in the U.S.
And I came across this editorial.
There is apparently a campaign in the American public school system to suppress literature. It’s called #DisruptTexts.
Thus, some idiot YA author calls for the abolition of Shakespeare: Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.
And a teacher in Lawrence, Massachusetts boasts about getting The Odyssey taken out of her school’s curriculum.
Fuck woke culture.
I hate it. Woke culture is the reason why despite my intense loathing for Donald Trump, I am disinclined to support the Democratic Party.
Woke culture is the intellectual equivalent of Wahhabi Islam.
Woke culture is the Taliban dynamiting the Buddhas of Bamiyan.
Woke culture is Cotton Mather raging at the pulpit.
###
Of course, the Republican Party is just as bad though they sweep in from the opposite direction. The Christian values direction.
But the net result, fundamentalism, is entirely the same.
I hate everyone who suppresses free speech for any reason.
And, yes. Free speech includes so-called hate speech.
I’m half convinced that the reason why there are so many nuts going on Ak-747 shooting sprees throughout this country is that words—a safe haven if you actually think about it ‘cause unlike sticks and stones, they can’t break your bones—are no longer an acceptable means of spewing rage.
Of course, if you have the necessary social infrastructure in place, you can effectively channel out rage from a culture.
China did it. Japan did it.
But the process took 4,000 years.
###
I was so furious, I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I did another thing you’re never supposed to do in the middle of the night: I watched a movie. A very bad movie.
Honestly, it’s difficult to muster any sympathy at all for an entertainment industry—desperately struggling to stay alive in these times of the Plague—that gave us shit like State of Play when it was king of the ash heap.
What a dreadful, dreadful script. What a formulaic plot. My boyfriend Russell Crowe did his jaunty best with the terrible dialogue, but I gotta ask: Why does Ben Affleck have a career? His facial muscles are incapable of movement! He’s like a corpse the mortician has just finished shooting up with formaldehyde! Why, that mortician did a fine job, you say to yourself. Ben Affleck almost looks like he’s alive!
Almost…
I fell asleep before the last tortured plot point revealed itself. I’m guessing Ben Affleck was the bad guy after all.
###
And dreamed: Flavia had acquired a vast herd of “sheep” that could only be monitored digitally as little white dots on a vast green screen. For some reason, she had hired me to monitor them.
(There was an intriguing side angle to this plot point: Mankind was now being fed out of vats of laboratory-grown cells, flavored by various chemicals to taste like tomatoes, carrots, beef, etc. Except if mankind realized this, there would be a huge revolt, and no one would eat anything. To prevent mankind from finding out, “they”—alas! the dream was silent on “their” identification. aliens? feral vegans? who can say?—had invented digital animal exchanges.)
Then I was wandering around some very rundown city streets with someone who could have been BB or who could have been Bill Knutsen. (Both have been favorite companions on my Urban Decay Walking Tours at various points in my life.). The rundown streets were very familiar, as though I’d dreamed them many times before. Although now that I’m awake, I can’t recall ever having dreamed of them before.
Jenny G_____ was with us too, someone whom I both admire (because she’s an awesome writer) and dislike (because she’s so fucking woke.)
I was telling a story, the creation myth of the Vogels! Neither of my companions was particularly interested. They kept interrupting me, which—of course!—pissed me off.
I was also pregnant. Four months pregnant to be exact. I was just beginning to show!
“Don’t be surprised if the baby is black,” I told my companions, remembering the baby’s father.
When I woke up, it was 10 o’clock.
Ten o’clock!
I don’t think I’ve ever slept in that late before in my adult life.
I rationalized this horrible lapse of judgement by telling myself The WSJ is the only reliable source for international news in the U.S.
And I came across this editorial.
There is apparently a campaign in the American public school system to suppress literature. It’s called #DisruptTexts.
Thus, some idiot YA author calls for the abolition of Shakespeare: Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.
And a teacher in Lawrence, Massachusetts boasts about getting The Odyssey taken out of her school’s curriculum.
Fuck woke culture.
I hate it. Woke culture is the reason why despite my intense loathing for Donald Trump, I am disinclined to support the Democratic Party.
Woke culture is the intellectual equivalent of Wahhabi Islam.
Woke culture is the Taliban dynamiting the Buddhas of Bamiyan.
Woke culture is Cotton Mather raging at the pulpit.
###
Of course, the Republican Party is just as bad though they sweep in from the opposite direction. The Christian values direction.
But the net result, fundamentalism, is entirely the same.
I hate everyone who suppresses free speech for any reason.
And, yes. Free speech includes so-called hate speech.
I’m half convinced that the reason why there are so many nuts going on Ak-747 shooting sprees throughout this country is that words—a safe haven if you actually think about it ‘cause unlike sticks and stones, they can’t break your bones—are no longer an acceptable means of spewing rage.
Of course, if you have the necessary social infrastructure in place, you can effectively channel out rage from a culture.
China did it. Japan did it.
But the process took 4,000 years.
###
I was so furious, I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I did another thing you’re never supposed to do in the middle of the night: I watched a movie. A very bad movie.
Honestly, it’s difficult to muster any sympathy at all for an entertainment industry—desperately struggling to stay alive in these times of the Plague—that gave us shit like State of Play when it was king of the ash heap.
What a dreadful, dreadful script. What a formulaic plot. My boyfriend Russell Crowe did his jaunty best with the terrible dialogue, but I gotta ask: Why does Ben Affleck have a career? His facial muscles are incapable of movement! He’s like a corpse the mortician has just finished shooting up with formaldehyde! Why, that mortician did a fine job, you say to yourself. Ben Affleck almost looks like he’s alive!
Almost…
I fell asleep before the last tortured plot point revealed itself. I’m guessing Ben Affleck was the bad guy after all.
###
And dreamed: Flavia had acquired a vast herd of “sheep” that could only be monitored digitally as little white dots on a vast green screen. For some reason, she had hired me to monitor them.
(There was an intriguing side angle to this plot point: Mankind was now being fed out of vats of laboratory-grown cells, flavored by various chemicals to taste like tomatoes, carrots, beef, etc. Except if mankind realized this, there would be a huge revolt, and no one would eat anything. To prevent mankind from finding out, “they”—alas! the dream was silent on “their” identification. aliens? feral vegans? who can say?—had invented digital animal exchanges.)
Then I was wandering around some very rundown city streets with someone who could have been BB or who could have been Bill Knutsen. (Both have been favorite companions on my Urban Decay Walking Tours at various points in my life.). The rundown streets were very familiar, as though I’d dreamed them many times before. Although now that I’m awake, I can’t recall ever having dreamed of them before.
Jenny G_____ was with us too, someone whom I both admire (because she’s an awesome writer) and dislike (because she’s so fucking woke.)
I was telling a story, the creation myth of the Vogels! Neither of my companions was particularly interested. They kept interrupting me, which—of course!—pissed me off.
I was also pregnant. Four months pregnant to be exact. I was just beginning to show!
“Don’t be surprised if the baby is black,” I told my companions, remembering the baby’s father.
When I woke up, it was 10 o’clock.
Ten o’clock!
I don’t think I’ve ever slept in that late before in my adult life.
