SomeStoryThoughts

I know there is a lot of discourse (tm) around this right now but listen to me

If I were lean down and say “unfortunately the big beach ball for some reason fills you with such an unadulterated rage that is beyond human comprehension that you scream until you pass out, so mama had to remove the beach ball from the premises until you can better regulate your emotions” she would simply stare at me like I had 3 heads full of equal betrayal.

☕️☕️☕️🫖🍵🍵🍪

Pause all dread and catastrophe to have a cuppa and some cookies for the next 15-30 minutes

does not want to be a dull

husk of a human.

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.

It is important to consider the culture of the person who created the piece, absolutely; but the different perspectives offered by the viewers is fascinating in and of itself and does not always detract from the message.

As an example, when I was younger, I watched Schindler's List. This movie is famously shot in black and white except for one section, concerning a little girl in a red coat. The camera follows her until her eventual death.

I am Turtle Island Indigenous and I was always taught that the only color spirits could see was red, because it is the color of life and blood.

So the second the girl in the red jacket came on screen, something inside me chilled with fear.

The only color in the movie was that red. At some point, I, the viewer, had died.

I remember sobbing at the sight of the burning human piles that were shown, convinced I was buried in there somewhere. The reason I had only seen red on the girl was that my death was recent. I was the ash in the air mistaken for snow. I had died before her and had followed her, helplessly, until she followed me.

The message I got for that was maybe not what the creator had intended: that there was no "being clever enough" or "good enough" or "kind enough" that would shield or protect you from such a massive tidal wave of evil.

You are not exempt from tragedy, that red jacket whispered. You are not special.

When I told some of my white friends about my experience with viewing Schindler's List, some were shocked and the rest just out-and-out mocked me for my "media illiteracy".

"it was just a filming trick to make you feel something," I remember one saying, which terrified me. How had he not felt anything even before she showed up?

To be clear, I’m not here to scold @sound-the-horn because how dare they read their culture into a Jewish movie, blah blah blah. It’s more about the reaction they got? Because I have a sinking feeling that if I did the same thing, there’s not an insignificant chance that I would get shut down, too. I am Jewish, and in this hypothetical situation, I would be discussing a Jewish film made by a Jewish film about the Jewish genocide, and I still think there’s a good chance I might get dismissed. I’ve seen the Jewish elements in works by Jewish creators ignore, dismissed, or deliberately ripped out too often to not have doubts.

idk what I’m trying to say here. there’s a discomfort with interpretations outside the cultural mainstream I guess? like, it doesn’t matter whether you’re reading or writing your minority culture into a piece of work, there’s not an insignificant chance that it’ll get sanded away if that work gets popular. does that make any sense?

On a more personal note, @sound-the-horn reading your interpretation reminded me of these two bits from Night and Maus respectively:

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

:| :| :|

Pros: I’ll have access to them later because they’re fucking hilarious

consistent practice opens up whole worlds of skill that you couldn't imagine

making mistakes in the process of learning is not only natural, it is also essential

activities that you enjoy can give you more energy back than you spent on them

She was asked to speak on ‘Women and fiction’ (and God, people still pull this crap, although nowadays it’s genre specific) and her response was one part ‘WTF kind of topic is that?’ and five parts, ‘Look, if you want to know anything about women and fiction you need to at least give them the same bloody opportunities that men have had to write. Namely:

‘A room of one’s own and £500 a year’ (about £35,000 or something now). And shy didn’t mean ‘a well-payimg job’ she meant a guaranteed income you didn’t have to work for. You know, like Mr Darcy had. £500 is a lot less than Mr Darcy, but it’s enough that you can pay someone else to clean and never have to worry about rent or bills or food. You know, about what most of the great male authors in history had.

The idea of comparing men and women’s contributions when they haven’t had the same opportunities and saying something intelligible about it, she’s saying, is nonsense.

It’s also where Shakespeare’s Sister originates.

She sticks to that one topic, but honestly, the point applies whatever your marginalisation. Do you have a room of your own and enough to live without financial worry? No? Then give yourself some slack.