donate to feed refugees in rafah

spreadsheet of gofundmes to evacuate families

fundraiser for esims for gaza

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

listen, if guitar can be used in a rock band, any string instrument can. in my experience, violin is often suited better to a role more similar to lead guitar, just because of the instrument’s range. but CELLO. i don’t even play cello, but man, that thing is versatile. (also the easiest to do vibrato on. yes, i’m jealous.) it’s got a wonderful range that can easily take on a higher pitched solo riff, or a constant rhythm backup part. (i know viola fits into this equation somewhere but i rarely see them featured in ensembles like this. sorry, violas.)

string instruments all have generally the same structure: strings (duh), a bridge (the place where they’re anchored), a nut and tuning pegs (to pull the strings taught so they produce a particular pitch), a neck (to hold the strings down to refine the pitch), and a body (for the sound to resonate through).

the biggest difference between “rock” instruments and “classical” instruments is just a few structural changes and the manner in which they are played.

guitar (and bass guitar) have frets, while a standard orchestral string instrument does not. the frets are those little metal things that go down the neck of the instrument. without them, you have to get A LOT more precise with your finger placement if you want the pitch to be right. it also means that the string is being held in place by a strip of metal, instead of flesh, so that changes the sound a bit.

electric instruments (including electric violins and cellos, which are AWESOME) have major changes to the body. since the sound is being amplified by Magic Computer Things That I Don’t Understand, the body doesn’t have to resonate the sound as much. it’s why electric guitars are so quiet without an amp.

plucking vs bowing. this, my friends, is where the magic happens. to make a string instrument make sound, you have to make the string vibrate somehow. guitars are usually plucked, picked, or strummed. (all pretty much the same thing - you pull the string to the side a little bit, and then release the tension.) but string instruments can also be bowed by pulling some sort of fiber (traditionally horse hair) across the string, and the friction produces sound. to produce enough friction without an inhuman amount of strength, you have to cover the bow hair with rosin. (it’s refined tree sap. please do not lick it, crush it up and snort it, or use the dust to draw pictures on your friend’s shirt. (yes, i’ve personally witnessed all of these.)) the reason you don’t typically see bows used on guitars is because the bridge is flat, instead of rounded, making it more difficult to get the right angle.

so basically, the reason that a cello seems weird in this context is because we’re just not used to seeing bowed instruments do this. bowing creates such a different sound, but the main structure of the instruments is so similar that it actually makes a lot of sense to me why we’re seeing more bands use classical string instruments.

and before anyone gets mad about guitars and violins clearly NOT being the same thing, let me explain it like this. (i swear it’s related just bear with me.) have you ever seen a photo of a dolphin embryo? or an elephant? a bat? a pig? compare it to a human embryo. we know that when all of those things grow up, they will be very different. but looking at them in such early stages of development, it’s much easier to see how they are evolutionarily related. pretty cool, right?

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

HAPPY PRIDE! 🌈