Archive for November, 2016
Poetic aspersion
My friend Kat once described a guy this way: “He has a pickle shoved so far up his butt that it makes him hiccup dill.” That still cracks me up.
Life
I expect that the person who gave the breakfast cereal that name received a nifty bonus. The one(s) who named Grape-Nuts, too, audacity being the root of beauty.
Fall
This is such a beautiful time of year in Vancouver, the golden lateral light in between the rainy times, the leaves lining sidewalks, Goths with hidden tattoos coming at you with boots more dangerous than axes, & swift fragrant winds reminding us to look high & look over & to feel great & teeny & essential in these moments.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
A beautiful photogallery published at Vice.com to mark the day, by Jackie Dives and coproduced by my friend Jack Fox.
It’s 2016, and peeing while trans is still generally viewed as a political activity. If it’s happening in a public washroom, legislators want to know it, schools are trying to rebrand it, and at least one Alberta mom attempted to rap about it.
All of this never-ending debate can feel pretty fucking strange, considering trans people are just doing same things as everybody else in there. That there isn’t competing outrage over sounds, smells and soap availability is anybody’s guess.
It’s frankly no wonder trans activist Jack Fox has spent a decade scouting out every non-gendered toilet in his city. Even though Fox says he “reads” as male, the the fear of harassment in the “men’s room” still lingers. “I was so nervous to use a public washroom for fear of being attacked or verbally harassed, I would often wait all day until returning home to go,” he told VICE of his early transition days. “Some days I waited up to 16 hours, being strategic as to what I drank or ate so I did not need to use the toilet.”
Fox recently teamed up with Vancouver photographer Jackie Dives on a photo series that confronts those anxieties and the transphobia that causes them. It pairs photos of non-binary people having a chill time in public stalls with personal stories of dealing with assumptions and hate. To mark Transgender Day of Remembrance, we’ve publish a selection of them here.
The brief quotes beneath the photographs tell a long story.
Photo by Jackie Dives, all rights reserved
The hobo ethical code
This is beautiful. From Open Culture:
1. Decide your own life; don’t let another person run or rule you.
2. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
3. Don’t take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos.
4. Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but ensure employment should you return to that town again.
5. When no employment is available, make your own work by using your added talents at crafts.
6. Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk and set a bad example for locals’ treatment of other hobos.
7. When jungling in town, respect handouts, do not wear them out, another hobo will be coming along who will need them as badly, if not worse than you.
8. Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.
9. If in a community jungle, always pitch in and help.
10. Try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible.
11. When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.
12. Do not cause problems in a train yard, another hobo will be coming along who will need passage through that yard.
13. Do not allow other hobos to molest children; expose all molesters to authorities…they are the worst garbage to infest any society.
14. Help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home.
15. Help your fellow hobos whenever and wherever needed, you may need their help someday.
Reposted from nocontest.ca
basil.CA 