My Snail Shell

Hey guys, my husband and I are now separated. I will be moving into another room in the house, but I'm badly in need of a bed replacement, so there is a new goal up on my ko-fi that will cover everything I need if you could drop a few bucks. YOU can help save my back and let me rest easy as I navigate how my life is changing from this point forward.

Because when you think about it, the problem isn't that you can go to your chosen bookseller and find a story where Sparklia Special gets semi-forced to have babies for Broody McDarkenfay (it's okay, she's into it). The problem is that it is unnecessarily difficult to look a little further down the shelf and find a vampire princess domming the hell out of the hunter who knows he shouldn't love her. Reducing people's choices always serves the reactionary agenda one way or another. Expanding choices. That's where it's at.

God crafted me a clown and she bid me to dance in her moonlight and to perform, and I will be her silliest spooky clown until she calls me home.

I appreciate the heavy weight I am applying to a task that at its very heart is fluffy and soft and easy to relegate as irrelevant.

It is born out of frustration of so many things by systems designed to grind into a paste everything and everyone possible, a paste to be scraped by a cracker that will lay forgotten on a plate as the party moves elsewhere.

Some are called by horns to become great leaders and captains of industry.

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:

Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.

Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.

Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

Dumpster diving is something that tons of people do for one reason for another. It is a great way to get a lot of stuff for free, even expensive things, and even be able to resell them in order to make money.

I make some money by doing this. I have heard of a couple of people who have even done this full time, making enough money to pay all of their bills. So this is a great way to be sustainable, and also to make money, which is becoming harder and harder in this crap Capitalism-dominated world. 

So what are some things that you can do to help to look through the dumpster safely?

1. If you do not have to go inside the dumpster, don’t!

I have been dumpster diving since I was 13 years old, and I am almost 30 now. I have never in my life climbed into a dumpster, and it will make solid gold bricks to get me in one. 

Instead, get a grabbing tool. For me, this tool is a bent hanger. This works for about 95% of everything I have found of value thus far. Then again, I mainly deal in clothing. So consider buying a specific tool for this called a grabber. I recommend purchasing one on Ebay, or on a site like Poshmark. Just make sure you buy it used for the most sustainability. 

2. Hit before you look

Animals love dumpsters. They often have free food for them. So if you are afraid to confront an animal, who may not retaliate out of fear, hit the side of the dumpster softy to scare them out first. The last you want is to look through a dumpster only to be confronted with a stray cat or a squirrel. 

3. Do not trespass

This should go without saying. If a dumpster has a fence around it, it is off limits. Do not trespass just to get some stuff out of the trash. Jail is never worth whatever you are going to find in there. 

4. Wash up

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Murderbot 💙💙💙

I've seen so many people talk about how certain types of discrimination exist specifically and deliberately to uphold capitalism or something, and most of the time they're just... things that happened. Bad habits we got into as a society, long before anyone alive today was born.

Like, the root of anti-black racism was not an accident. It was economically convenient for major powers in Europe to have a group of people they could exploit for slave labor and a continent that could be looted for valuables by nations that were trying to become global empires. That's not accidental, even if it wasn't a conspiracy. No one sat down at a table and plotted it out illuminati-style, but pretending that these systems popped up "accidentally", a "bad habit" that occurred through no one's fault, is really, entirely incorrect.

Political leaders have exploited pre-existing biases for deliberate ends since the dawn of recorded history, whether they are consciously aware of what they're doing or not. And those pre-existing biases also did not develop "accidentally", but due to culture clashes (a culture with a cannibalism taboo interacting with a culture without one, for example), zenophobia, greedy political leaders, propaganda, confirmation bias, and other aspects of human psychology and culture.

What I was trying to say, fundamentally, is that many things that were deliberate once are not deliberate anymore. That's what I meant by 'bad habits' - things may have started because of deliberate choices (generally bad ones, but not always; see the top comment for a good example of this), but that context has been lost, and now, a lot of the time, we just do things because 'that's how things are done.'

I initially wrote this because I'm Jewish, and I was tired of seeing people talk about shadowy elites making decisions that hurt all of us in secret back rooms like they weren't parroting Nazi talking points. I was tired of seeing people practically quoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion without seeming to realize that's what they were doing. Oppression is a many-layered beast, and some things are very much deliberate, but I think there are fewer of those than people are comfortable with. There is very rarely a single enemy, or even a small group of enemies, that you can pinpoint as the source of oppression - that's why we talk about systems of oppression in the first place.

Would getting rid of billionaires help the world economy begin to recover from the stagnancy and poverty it's been falling into over the years? Absolutely. Would it solve racism, since racism and classism are intimately tied - and, as you pointed out, since slavery, one of the forces that still echoes through and drives antiblack racism to this day, was itself initially driven by economic decisions? Absolutely not, and the idea that it would is one I've seen far too often. Racism is deeply entrenched in our society, legally and socially as well as economically. People are not going to forget their prejudice just because they're able to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads. The laws that continue to oppress people of color and even force them into modern-day slavery are not going to rewrite themselves. Because at this point, that's 'just the way things are done.'

I do think we broadly agree! It's completely true that systems of oppression can't be dissolved simply by finding the "right person" or "right group of people" to target. Even when there are genuinely dangerous, bigoted people who are driving oppressive systems (see billionaires, or the leaders of certain political administrations) removing them from power wouldn't solve anything overnight.

And on top of that, there is always a danger of misattributing the people who actually need to be removed from positions of power and punching down the social pecking order instead of punching up. Many people who get into conspiracy theories start out by recognizing that there is real systemic inequality in the world, only to have that genuine frustration with those-in-power be diverted onto completely innocent groups who have little to no systematic privilege to begin with, much less a secret council sinisterly controlling the world. (The most obvious example being antisemitic conspiracy theories, though you can also see similar beliefs among anti-trans bigots.) It’s always easier to punch down than up, and bullying those with less power than you have yourself is seductively satisfying.

There are no grand conspiracies orchestrated by a shadowy organization outside the public eye. In contrast, most of the most dangerous people in the world are extremely public--your Donald Trumps, your Jeff Bezoses. And much of the work of upholding systems of oppression doesn't even come from them, but from ordinary people who, without any initial malicious intent at all, imitate the systems they were born into. The people who refuse to vote or vote for candidates who promise them easy cathartic solutions to complex issues, who give into suspicion of their neighbors, who repeat bigoted stereotypes without considering their ramifications. I might not call it "accidental", per se, but I would say that a lot of bigotry is thoughtless.

Which might sound bleak on the surface, but the truth is that people, en masse, are often much easier to convince to leave their bigotries behind than you might expect. Education, empathy, diverse communities, the chance to live alongside people who are different from us--these are all valuable tools in dismantling oppressive systems. Perhaps the most valuable ones we have.

Americans:

From Wikipedia: A graham cracker is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour.

The next ingredient (which is also extremely traditionally American but slightly more variable) is typically Hershey's chocolate, but you could probably swap this out in the UK with any plain chocolate bar.

Last ingredient is big marshmallows, the kind you do the chubby bunny challenge with, like the size of your thumb and twice as thick.

A proper s'more, the most traditional possible variety, involves to graham cracker squares, two slab segments of Hershey's chocolate, and one to two marshmallows depending on your preference for filling and gooeyness. You put a slab of chocolate on one of the graham cracker squares. Your marshmallows should be toasted, usually over a campfire but if you're doing them at home over a gas stove burner is fine, but the fire part is critical. You can toast them to whatever degree you like, some people like them nice and golden brown but still kind of firm in the middle, me personally? I want that bitch to CATCH ON FIRE, I want it gooey and sticky as hell in the middle, crispy and burnt on the outside. Slap that motherfucker on your graham cracker and chocolate square, top with the other one so your marshmallow and chocolate are sandwiched together by graham cracker on the outside. You do this with your freshly toasted marshmallow because ideally it will be hot enough to start to melt the chocolate so it sticks to the marshmallow and the graham cracker and, combined with the gooey marshmallow, it keeps the whole thing together, and for that reason some people will let them sit for a hot second to let the melting process happen (especially if like me you have chocolate on BOTH graham cracker squares, not just one, because you're a sugar fiend), but if you are a young child you do not have that degree of patience and you eat that shit immediately, unmelted chocolate and all. Consume your summer camp delight like a tiny club sandwich, get gooey sticky marshmallow and chocolate all over your hands, and enjoy.

The first is that you don't pull the marshmallow off the roasting stick and somehow put it on the chocolate. Your staging area will look something like this, with the graham crackers and chocolate already set out (though not usually on the fire like this, for us it was always someone's lap or a picnic table or something)

And when your marshmallow has reached appropriate roasting perfection, you use the graham crackers to slide it off the stick.

and ideally, as a CHILD you are using a literal stick. Like you walked around and spent time looking for The Perfect Stick off the ground while the adults set up the fire. It has to be thin enough the marshmallow will fit, sturdy enough that it won't bow, long enough that you won't burn yourself roasting your marshmallow. And preferably doesn't have a lot of bark that's sloughing off, OR so much bar sloughing off you can peel it all back and get to the clean stick under it. If you're smart, you might stick the tip into the fire first to "wash" it/burn off anything that was still lingering, but. well, most kids don't.

When you bite in, the marshmallow and chocolate SHOULD ooze out all over you. If you don't kinda look like this eating it, you've probably done it wrong:

You find a spot, not above all the logs where everyone sticks their marshmallows by default, but at the heart of the fire. Ideally between a couple logs already glowing gold. Something like here:

Below the leaping flame. Near the logs. There's probably only one or two spots good enough for this on any given fire, but that's okay because everyone else is up above. They will get their marshmallows faster. They will be either firm or burned or both. That's not your goal.

Rotate the marshmallow slowly. Ideally come in at an angle so the part closest to the flame is the side, not the tip. The spot closest to the fire is the spot that turns a crispy golden brown, and you want that everywhere, on the tip and around the circle.

You keep going, slowly turning, for several minutes. Several people will rotate in and out of the higher sections, getting their fast delight. Eventually, your marshmallow will start sagging badly, risking falling. Maybe it does fall and got start over. But eventually it will be golden brown all over, and so liquid it no longer clings to the stick. It is ready, finally.

You say "who hasn't gotten one yet?" And deposit it onto their waiting graham crackers and chocolate. You've made an excellent marshmallow. It isn't for you. Get another while you're over by the bags and go back to the heart of the fire.

That's your evening. One, slow, perfect marshmallow at a time, given to whomever still wants s'more. You're making art for children to stuff into their mouths cheerfully. You're watching the movement of the fire and the heat of the logs, like you would if you were maintaining it — maybe you would be, maybe you were the one who built it — but right now that's not the goal. Let someone else put more logs on, while you take only the one stick and find the best spot for it to live.

You will, eventually, finish a marshmallow and find that nobody moves to accept it. Maybe they're all eating right now, or maybe they've gone through so many they're hesitating. Eat your masterpiece then. Enjoy it, the hardest and most perfect result from a fun and beautiful moment. Go back in for another, until you've run out of marshmallows and the fire is too low or until even you are done with s'mores, until you have made enough.