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A fairytale

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Once upon a time there was a beautiful Commoner from a far-off land, who was stuck with that label because inexplicably we’re still using it in the twenty-first century. She happened to catch the eye of a handsome prince and the two were married in a grand ceremony.

However, after the wedding a number of townspeople began to turn against the now princess, and started accusing her of bewitching the prince with her cunning feministic ways. Some of them were whipped into a frenzy by a particularly vile troll, who literally could not go a day without complaining that the princess wasn’t interested in him.

Eventually the prince and princess had a baby, and although the people of the kingdom offered congratulations, many of them were also quietly complaining that the princess was tainting the royal family with her foreign blood. Sometimes in those exact words, even.

So unsurprisingly, the prince and princess cut their losses and fled to Canada. The witch-burners got all confused and started looking around for another rich person of colour they could take their various inadequacies out on, and the vile troll pretty much just exploded in a cacophony of barely coherent rage. They all lived unhappily ever after.

The end.

Trans TV star India Willoughby calls Meghan Markle a ‘Poundland Diana’ and it seriously backfires

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In what will likely be the biggest feud of 2020, British chain store Poundland has hit out at transgender television presenter India Willoughby for calling Meghan Markle a “Poundland Diana.” 576 more words

Trans TV star India Willoughby calls Meghan Markle a ‘Poundland Diana’ and it seriously backfires — PinkNews – Gay news, reviews and comment from the world’s most read lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans news service

I’m with Poundland on this one, because it’s offensive to Meghan in the same I’m-pretty-sure-this-is-racially-biased way everyone has been offensive to Meghan recently (why isn’t Kate called Poundland Diana? She shops cheaply too) and offensive to us plebeians who shop at Poundland (yo!) by implying it’s bad in some way.

But I’m actually legitimately impressed by Poundland’s response:

“Supportive of trans people” is a REALLY low bar for a company to step over, obviously, but I appreciate it.

Paddington: The Man Behind The Bear + history

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After Paddington 2 aired on BBC1 tonight (and was a total delight as always) BBC2 aired a documentary about Paddington, his origins and his author. I’d never seen it before and it was unexpectedly sad and powerful, especially when going into Michael Bond’s experiences in World War II. Here’s some stories from the past, featured in the doc, which are still (very, very) relevant today.

Michael Bond’s own words regarding his family’s sheltering of refugees (from a 2010 letter:)

“We took in some Jewish children who often sat in front of a fire of an evening, quietly crying because they had no idea what had happened to their parents, and neither did we at the time. It’s the reason why Paddington arrived with the label around his neck.”

A reminiscence from Peter Joseph, of the Windrush generation:

“Paddington Bear came here [London] in 1958. I arrived the 3rd of November 1956, and I’m sure that he had a better reception than I did, because I had a hell of a lot of fuss. We were seen as a subspecies, and that’s how it remained for a very long time.”

And a passage from Bond’s autobiography:

“In October, I made my final journey back to the UK. In Gibraltar, where we stopped for a few hours, there was a small open ship moored a little way apart from all the others. It was packed to suffocation with Jewish refugees, men, women and children making their way to Palestine. And for the first time, as I gazed down at them, I felt ashamed to be British.”

It’s funny to think of a cute little teddy bear being a political symbol, but…

There’s in a line in the first movie, “People in England sent their children by train with labels around their necks, so they could be taken care of by complete strangers in the country side where it was safe. They will not have forgotten how to treat strangers.” But of course, those particular strangers were English: it’s those other ones we don’t like.

Do watch The Man Behind The Bear if you can. It should be on the BBC iplayer. (I don’t know how you get into it outside Britain unfortunately, but I can try putting some clips from it on YouTube at some point maybe?)

In the meantime, don’t forget to utilize your Long, Hard Stare appropriately.

Guardians

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An important reblog for a terrible day.

Coalition of the Brave

It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy; to embrace the joyous task we’ve been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours. Because for all our outward differences, we all share the same proud title: Citizen.

Ultimately, that’s what our democracy demands. It needs you. Not just when there’s an election, not just when your own narrow interest is at stake, but over the full span of a lifetime. If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try to talk with one in real life. If something needs fixing, lace up your shoes and do some organizing. If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself. Show up. Dive in. Persevere. Sometimes you’ll win. Sometimes you’ll lose. Presuming a reservoir of goodness in others can be a risk…

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Woodlice

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Every damn evening there’s woodlice on the tiles around the back door. I don’t know why they come in. I think they must see the lights of the house and mistake them for safety. They get the opposite, of course. When a woodlouse gets inside it pretty quickly dehydrates and dies.

I don’t like bugs of any kind but I try to put up with the woodlice constantly doing what’s worst for them. Some of them are lucky and I see them in time, crawling across the floor oblivious to the danger and oblivious to the disgust they’re causing. Then I get the dustpan and sweep them up with the many, many bodies of their fellow woodlice and put them outside.

While waiting for the election results, I watched The Muppet Christmas Carol

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…and it seemed like a weirdly appropriate film to be watching.

I love that movie and I especially love that it’s played so straight. Whole segments of dialogue are lifted from the book and said by Muppets and it works! Scenes of sincere and saddening human emotion are acted out by Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy and I never doubt it all for a minute. Honest to god, I think Charles Dickens, once someone had explained to him what a Muppet was, would have loved Muppet Christmas Carol.

Anyway. At the end of the movie Gonzo very wisely suggests the audience read the book. So, with less than a hour to go before the election results start coming in, here’s a significant bit from the book that didn’t make it into the movie (although I’m sure the Muppet performers would have done a good job with it.)

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

A Christmas Carol
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