I hate the sand

I've entered the final phase of my graduate degree program in Folklore and Ethnology. My coursework and fieldwork/data collection complete, I am now in the process of writing my thesis during this summer trimester.

As planned, the support so many of you so generously provided, in addition to an education stipend I earned through environmental work, enabled me to enroll in and attend courses in my program, afford housing, and generally live everyday as a student for the duration of my course modules.

The funds lasted exactly as long as planned (literally to the day, I couldn't believe it lol!), and I could not be more grateful for every cent and word of support I received over this last year and a half.

In the final leg of my program, I must ask for support of one final need: There are quite a few books I need which I cannot access through my university, from friends and classmates, my professors, online archives & epublications, or any other means. Some are difficult to find in the first place to be able to purchase at all.

Put simply: I need some help buying books!

Many of them have Ebook editions for as little as €15,00! Others I have to actually email the authors and ask for personal PDFs, but they still aren't too expensive.

I began a new job recently and am on my way, but I won't have the couple hundred euro it will ultimately cost to purchase all of these books this month in order to have them while I work on my thesis.

...uh, I'm pretty sure people do 😭

ceramic wip

Trans activist Jamison Green's passport photos before and after HRT. Left he's age 32 (1980) Right age 41 (1989) after being on testosterone for one year (x)

Credits: photo 1, photo 2

What is the difference between a bee and a wasp? Well, to put it in the simplest way— bees are complete nectarivores and get protein by processing pollen and nectar in multiple ways while wasps are only nectarivores as adults and get all their protein needs out of the way as larvae by consuming bug meat. So here comes the exception; despite being more related to yellowjackets and paper wasps than they are to bees, members of the group referred to as "pollen wasps" feed their larvae a diet sourced entirely from plant pollen and nectar, just like bees. Though while bees are known for processing it and making it more of a "bread", these wasps do it more stew style.

They also sleep very similarly to scoliid wasp (which they are only distantly related to) by curling up tightly around sticks or grass

Talking like a jerk

Except you are an actual jerk

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

Carved antler discovered at the Grotte de Lortet rock shelter in the French Pyrenees

I say this with so, so much care: Real queer shit written by real queers can and will sometimes make you uncomfortable. That's one of the defining features of weird, independent queer media. And weird independent media more broadly. Art that comes from true individual passion and authenticity has edges and bite to it that mass market corporate products intentionally do not. Has a rawness that can offend.