Charmed, my darling

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

As a trans woman, I really, really, don't appreciate people acting like they know what it was like for me growing up. Like yeah, I realize that your childhood was like that and I'm sorry that you were treated that way. But don't act like that's how it is for everyone.

I was very much seen as one of the guys growing up. I went to "boys nights" with the guys, which typically consisted of very masculine activities, I had gay cis dudes hit on me, I never once was seen as anything other than a dude.

Guys never once mistreated me, or saw me as anything other than a man. Even through University, I was seen as a man to the point where my University friends were shocked when I came out to them as a trans woman.

I was even treated as "one of the safe ones" all through high school by the girls I hung out with. I had an all female friend group that I hung out with and gossiped with, and was allowed to hang out with them in and out of school, because friendship with me never came with the possibility that I was gonna make things weird and try to fuck them. I showed no interest in dating them and treated them like any other person.

They literally called me a "Girl's guy".

And then there's my husband, who hated being a girl, hated femininity, was bullied by girls growing up, never had any friends aside from a few guys in high school, and was never accepted as a girl by girls.

I just remembered that this was a thing that was HILARIOUS in 2006 and apparently that was ten years ago now.

Old people: join with me in remembering how funny we found this on LiveJournal.

Young people: look at this lolrus, it’s so happy, it has a bucket.

🪤

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

While it's true that in the West white male artists (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd etc.) were the ones most heavily promoted, archived and mythologized from the 60's to the 90's; were the ones labeled as "classic rock" (ugh, I hate this term) by white critics, journalists, radio and record labels, people still confuse who was amplified with whom the genre belongs to.

In fact, rock wouldn't exist without black artists and musical traditions: blues (Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley), R&B (Chuck Berry, Little Richard), gospel (Sister Rosetta Tharpe) and jazz influences.

Artists like Fats Domino weren't the exceptions, they were the architects.

60's-70's when rock becomes "serious"?

Jimi Hendrix. Arguably, the most influential guitarist ever.

But also Santana, Sly & the Family Stone, Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy, massively influential), Parliament-Funkadelic, Arthur Lee (Love), War.

70's-80's with punk and hardcore?

Death (proto-punk before the Ramones), Bad Brains, Poly Styrene (X-Ray Spex), Fishbone, ESG, Bush Tetras.

90's-00's?

Rage Against the Machine, TV on the Radio, Kele Okereke (Bloc Party), Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Chino Moreno (Deftones), The Mars Volta, Carlos Dengler (Interpol).

Today?

Mitski, Tosin Abasi & Javier Reyes (Animals As Leaders), Toro y Moi, Khruangbin, Big Joanie, Bartees Strange, Meet Me @ The Altar, The Linda Lindas, Yves Tumor.

A lot of these artists are rebranded as "indie" or "alternative" instead of "rock," but come on.

What about metal and heavy?

Living Colour, Sevendust, Body Count, Alien Weaponry (Māori metal), Bloodywood, Chthonic (Taiwanese), Tengger Cavalry.

Some influential women?

Joan Jett & The Runaways, Pat Benatar, Deborah Dyer, Tracy Chapman, Patti Smith, Janis Joplin, Dolores O‘Riordan, Sinead O‘Connor, Heart, Melissa Etheridge, kd lang, Stevie Nicks, Bikini Kill, PJ Harvey, St. Vincent, HAIM, Big Thief, the Riot grrrl movement.

Queer or gender non-conforming rock?

Prince, Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Anohni, Japanese Breakfast, Perfume Genius.

Some non-Western rock scenes and bands?

Happy End, Yellow Magic Orchestra, RC Succession, X Japan, Boredoms, Luna Sea, Dir En Grey, Tricot, Boris, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs, Band-Maid, Polysics, Chatmonchy, Buck-Tick from Japan. Japanese bands export rock ideas, they don't imitate them.

Shin Jung-hyeon (godfather of Korean rock), Sanulrim, Jaurim, Hyukoh, Se So Neon, DongYang Gozupa, Huremic, Jambinai, Parannoul, Superstring, Tierpark. Korean rock was censored during dictatorships, which shaped its visibility.

Carsick Cars, Re-TROS, Queen Sea Big Shark, He Yong, Brain Failure, Demerit, Chui Wan, Cui Jian, Carsick Cars (China)

No Party for Cao Dong, Gestalt Girl, Sorry Youth, Fire EX., Blacklisted Studio, BB Bomb, Go go Machine Orchestra, Pleiades, Scattered Purgatory (Taiwan)

Nicky Astria, Scaller, Voice Of Baceprot, Marjinal, Superman Is Dead, Burgerkill, Dewa Budjana, Giant Step, God Bless, I Know You Well Miss Clara, Imanissimo, Lefty Fish, Harry Roesli, Shark Move, simakDialog, Tohpati Bertiga, Tohpati Ethnomission (Indonesia)

Up Dharma Down, Eraserheads, The Itchyworms, Fools & Foes, Francis Cang, Statuam Tom's Story, Two Chilekings (Philippines)

Bức Tường, Hạc San (Vietnam)

Mongolian rock with its Khöömii (throat singing): The HU, Altan Urag, Nine Treasures, Hanggai, Tengger Cavalry, Suld.

Panikrama, Thermal and a Quarter, Advaita, Motherjane, Indian Ocean, Bloodywood, Peter Cat Recording Co., Amogh Symphony, Ranjit Barot, Coma Rossi, Coshish, Dark Light, Flaw and Order, Macky Ar, Phenom, Protocol, Saagara (India)

Noori, Entity Paradigm, The Sketches, Takatak, 6LA8, Faraz Anwar, Entity Paradigm, Overload (Pakistan)

Artcell (Bangladesh)

Sanam Pasha, The Yellow Dogs, O-Hum, Kourosh Yaghmaei, Arsames, Confess, Quartet Diminished, Agah Bahari, Mavara, Across The Waves, Ahoora from Iran. Iran's official restrictions have historically barred women from singing solo in public, which means that rock performance and collaboration were driven underground or into exile.

Al Basim (Iraq)

Yalla, Vladimir Badirov (Fromuz), X RELIGION, Sado (Uzbekistan)

Firyuza (Turkmenistan)

Mor ve Ötesi, Moğollar, Altın Gün, Replikas, Barış Manço, Erkin Koray, Cem Karaca (Turkey)

Zamrock, the Zambian psychedelic rock movement. WITCH, Amanaz, Ngozi Family. They blended Hendrix, Sabbath and local rhythms. The movement was later crushed by AIDS and an economic collapse, not lack of creativity.

Saharan & Sahel rock: Tinariwen, Bombino, Tamikrest, Terakaft, Imarhan.

Cairokee, Massar Egbari, Eftekasat, Expiration of a young man, Riverwood, Simplexity (Egypt)

Ofege, The Funkees, Blo, MonoMono (Nigeria)

Tal National, Mdou Moctar (Niger)

Osibisa (Ghana)

Alemayehu Eshete (Ethiopia)

Jupiter Bokondji (Congo)

Juluka, BLK JKS, Savage Lucy, Trevor Rabin, Paving The Labyrinth, Freedom's Children, Flibbertigibbet, Demon Fuzz, Canamii, Robert Calvert, Albinobeach, Abstract Truth (South Africa)

Sintesis, Perfume De Mujer, Naranja Mecanica, Anima Mundi, Musica D'Repuesto (Cuba)

Las Ultrasónicas, Hello Seahorse!, Three Souls in My Mind/El Tri, Caifanes, Zoé, Café Tacuba, Ruido Rosa, San Pascualito Rey, Maldita Vecindad, Tijuana No!, Botellita de Jerez, (Mexico)

Aterciopelados, Briela Ojeda, Doctor Krápula, La Pestilencia, Las Yumbeñas, Oh’laville, (Colombia)

Soda Stereo, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Charly García, Viuda e Hijas de Roque Enroll, Fabiana Cantilo, Eruca Sativa, Babasónicos, Federico Moura, La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros, El Mató a un Policía Motorizado, Los Violadores (Argentina)

Os Mutantes, Secos & Molhados, Nervosa, Karina Buhr, Ney Matogrosso, Nação Zumbi, Plebe Rude, Boogarins (Brazil)

Los Prisioneros, Los Tres, Fiskales Ad-Hok, Ases Falsos, Fulano, Congreso, We Are The Grand (Chile)

Some math rock bands I love (since it's one of my fav subgenres):

which meant i went and read about snail brains.

here's the bad news, at least by human standards:

snails do not have anything like a centralized brain. their nervous system is made up of small clusters of neurons (ganglia) that mostly handle very local tasks. they don't have a cortex, they don't build big integrated models of the world, and they almost certainly don't experience things like appreciation, anticipation, or savoring.

pudding is not looking at the sky and thinking it's beautiful.

snail eyes are basically light sensors - they can tell bright from dark, but not form images. snail "taste" is done through chemoreceptors on their tentacles and around their mouth. those receptors don't produce flavor the way ours do; they just detect chemical compounds and sort them into "approach," "ignore," or "avoid."

so there's no evidence that snails enjoy food, or wind, or views, the way mammals do.

and that does sound kind of sad. but then i thought that maybe we are asking the wrong question.

snails do have valence. they detect aversive things (like salt or dryness) and withdraw from them. they detect non-aversive or beneficial conditions (like moisture) and stay extended. when pudding is stretched out like this, it means his nervous system is basically saying "this is safe; nothing is wrong."

if we define pleasure not as our human experience of dopamine and reward chemicals but instead as "the absence of aversion" - a state where the organism is open to its environment instead of defending itself - then this does count as something positive, even if it's extremely nothing like human enjoyment.

pudding isn't appreciating the wind. but his body is registering humidity, safety, and the ability to keep functioning, and that matters to him in the only way his nervous system can make things matter. he does not think "this is great, this is awesome, i love the weather", because he doesn't think in the way we do at all, but the neurological action in his ganglion tell his body that he is safe, that the moisture is an acceptable level, that it's not too dry or windy, and that there's nothing imminently threatening.

i think a lot of the sadness comes from assuming that a good life has to look like ours: full of enjoyment, meaning, and aesthetic experience. but a snail isn't missing those things. its world just isn't built to include them.

snails don't have a sense of flavor. they don't even have tastebuds. this seems like a gimme, right? but again that might be asking the wrong question about what "taste" is. biologically speaking, it's chemoreception. we taste sweet because it indicates high value, high calorie sugar molecules. we taste salty for salt, umami for proteins. so in what way does pudding's chemoreceptors differ from ours instrumentally? we can say "by our human perspective, pudding can't experience "preference" or "savoring" or "anticipation of delicious food"", but from pudding's perspective we have radically overengineered ourselves for the task at hand. pudding can tell what's salty, what's high value, what has the chemicals he needs. the functional outcome is that he can discriminate food souces based on their composition. is that not taste?